


Even When The Sun Comes Up

by Notacoolgirl



Category: Vis a Vis | Locked In (Spain TV)
Genre: Angst, Art, ArtisticZulema, AuZurena, Bisexual Character, DepressedZulema, Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Female Friendship, Friendship, Lesbian Character, Love, MagazneDirectorSaray, Mental Health Issues, PhotograperRizos, Romance, Slow Burn, photographerMacarena
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-27
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:35:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 44,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27220567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Notacoolgirl/pseuds/Notacoolgirl
Summary: “You look tense” Macarena let the brunette know.“I don’t mean to” Zulema shrugged, trying to shake off the tension.“it’s funny how meaning or not meaning to do something; means nothing” The blonde softly smirked, looking up to the brunette’s serious face “Like; I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable. But that doesn’t mean anything because I do it just the same, right?”“You do” Zulema agreed, gripping her sweaty hands against the fabric of her dress, hoping that the photographer wouldn’t notice the small movement, but closing her eyes in defeat when she heard yet another click coming from the camera.ORThe AU where Zulema is a depressed artist and Macarena is a hotshot photographer who feels fastinated by the artist after doing a photoshoot of her for a magazine.
Relationships: Estefanía "Rizos" Kabila/Saray Vargas, Macarena Ferreiro/Zulema Zahir, Saray Vargas & Zulema Zahir
Comments: 130
Kudos: 174





	1. Pilot

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested, the background song for this first chapter is Rosyln by Bon Yver.

Zulema’s green eyes roamed the face of the young woman named Anna that she had just met an hour ago, the girl was a make-up artist currently trying to make her look better for a photo-shoot that Saray had convinced her to do for the magazine she directed.

The dark-skinned girl had kind eyes, light touch and, unfortunally, a worried look on her face.

“You’re not going to be able to hide that” Zulema whispered to Anna, who has been trying her best to cover the dark circles under Zulema’s eyes.

“Can’t fix years of bad sleeping schedule in one hour, sorry" she let the sweet girl know, and the girl silently agreed; she didn’t want to be the one to say it but it was proving to be very difficult to make the woman look less tired than she looked when she first came in. She had been trying for the best part of an hour but the dark circles just wouldn’t go away.

“It’s fine, really. Maybe it’ll even do me some good and people will stop asking me to do this kind of thing” She reassured the girl who had a expression on her face that said she agreed with what she heard but was afraid that it would get her into trouble if she didn’t kept trying to do a better job at making the older woman look better.

“You’re sure? We could try applying more concealer” Anna offered. Zulema didn’t have to look at herself to know that the girl had done everything that she could for her appearance.

“It’s really fine” she smiled at the young woman, who finally nodded her head and stopped fussing over Zulema’s face.

“Well then, you’re all done. And you look beautiful” Anna earnestly said, turning Zulema's chair, so that it was now facing the mirrors and the woman could see herself.

Zulema had purposely turned the chair around when she first got to the make-up set and was immediately greeted by the enormous mirrors that covered up a whole wall, shining in front of the lined-up chairs. She had no interest in looking at herself. 

“That’s fine. Thank you, Anna" Zulema said when the girl turned her chair, she lowered her head and looked at her hands instead of looking up like Anna expected her to.

She hasn’t seen her own face in months, and she wouldn’t change that now, not when she wasn’t alone and couldn’t allow the breakdown that she knew would happen when she saw her own features again.

“You don’t want to see? You look great” Anna asked, but at the same time she turned Zulema’s chair back to the way it was before, seeing that the woman wasn’t as in love with the big mirrors as most of the people who sat in those chairs were.

Zulema looked up to meet the girl’s eyes for a fleeting second before deflecting her glare again. She tried to put on a smile to reassure the young woman, but she couldn’t.

“I don’t love mirrors either, deceiving little things” Anna smiled, lighting the mood and getting a soft smile from Zulema.

“But I’m sure you did the best you could with what you were given” Zulema reached for the girls hand that was close to her shoulder, still holding on to the chair, and squeezed it against her own, as her way of thanking her for her kindness.

Zulema was a very affectionate kind of person, she loved touching people in order to demonstrate her appreciation for them or something that they did, she also loved being touched, it was just a pity that she wouldn’t allow people to get close enough to physically comfort her anymore. That was probably one more reason for the way that she felt so utterly disconnected from the outside world. 

“You’ll do great out there” Anna kindly reassured, squeezing the artist’s hand for a second or two. After a minute, she turned around and started to collect her work materials.

“Thank you, you're very kind” Zulema said when she got up from her chair. She moved towards the door and was ready to leave, before she did, she looked back at the young woman and waved her goodbye, with a soft appreciation smile on her face. 

She stepped out of the make-up set and into the hallway, that seemed to be an endless road to nowhere, in hopes of finding her friend in there.

Anna had watched through the mirror as the woman walked away, thinking that the artist was so strangely beautiful and that she had never felt anything quite as compelling as the woman’s touch; So soft and gentle, she was sure that the fleeting touch had drained away every bad feeling that she had ever felt “What an unusual woman”...

* * *

Out in the hallway, Zulema was already feeling really overwhelmed by how many people passed by her. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry to get somewhere, and there was so much talking, coming from everywhere at once.

She looked around trying to spot a familiar face, or just anyone who would lead her away from there and let her know which way she should go to get this job over with, but she saw no one. People went past her like she was invisible, and they were nothing but fleeting bright lights. Their faces blurred and their voices mixed together, creating the most chaotic language that she had ever heard.

She had her back against a wall while everyone continued to move in such rapid speed around the place. She couldn’t remember which way she came from so she couldn’t return to the quiet makeup room where the sweet young woman was.

She brought one hand up to rest against her chest, feeling her heart drumming strongly beneath her palm and her breathing becoming erratic.

She looked at her other hand, seeing the blue paint there and momentarily wondering how it ever got there at all, since she hasn’t used blue colors in any of her paintings for the last month.

The noise just got louder, and she felt herself starting to slide down the wall, not able to control her breathing or the pounding inside her head. Thankfully, before she got any further down, she felt strong hands gripping at her arms, pulling her up and keeping her steady.

“Zule, it’s fine.. Just look at me, vale?” Zulema nodded, looking at her friends features and getting calmer instantly, carefully running her eyes through every detail on the woman’s face, details that she had painted so many times, in so many different ways; her dark eyebrows, soft lips, deep-dark eyes that had so much strength, her long dark hair, and the beautiful caramel color of her skin.

“Saray... I was looking for you, things got loud” she smiled still out of breath, slowly coming back to herself and feeling so much more relaxed now that her friend was there.

“I did tell you to wait for me” Saray answered, offering her friend a warm smile and letting go of the grip that she had on Zule's arm, to delicately hold the woman’s hand instead.

She wouldn’t ask her friend what had just happened, she wouldn’t mention or want any kind of explanation for Zulema’s small almost meltdown; Saray never did, she was just there to lead her friend away from it, and that’s why she was the only one Zulema didn’t cut out of her life after the accident. 

“Your crazy ass can’t be running around these hallways, you'd get lost and we might never find you again" she teased, but looking at Zulema’s face she saw the woman wasn’t amused.

“Don’t call me that" Zulema simply said and motioned with her free hand letting Saray know that she should lead the way.

“Didn’t meant that" Saray quickly apologized, she frowned at herself but didn’t let it be a big deal, although she knew how much her friend hated when people called her that.

Saray moved them through the hallways, leading Zulema by the hand.

“I know” Zulema whispered behind her friend. She knew that the woman always said that kind of thing as a form of affection, a way to show that they were close and could joke like that. It wasn’t her fault that Zulema had a personal vendetta against the word crazy.

They moved through the hallway with ease, now that Saray was showing her the way. They reached a door and Saray opened it, quickly getting them inside; the quiet and isolation made Zulema visibly relax.

“You're okay?” Saray finally asked, once they were inside the room.

“I’m ok” Zulema nodded reaffirming it to her friend, but in all honesty; she couldn’t really tell anymore, she didn’t know how to tell if she was or wasn’t ok, to her all of her days looked the same and breaking down somewhere around the twenty-four hours that she was given every day was just a part of it, didn’t really meant anything to her.

“Vale, I’m glad” Saray lead her to a couch by the wall and then moved back to find the outfits that were stored at the other side of the small room.

“You’ll look stunning in the outfits we got for you, Zule!” her friend excitedly said with a big smile on her face, finding a big blue dress with some green details on it and holding it up so that her friend could see it.

“Oh!” was all Zulema could say, looking at the huge ‘ _is it a dress?’_ Clothing that her friend was holding up. Saray absolutely loved the big and shiny outfits, whenever she was the one in a photoshoot, she would be wearing the most unusual clothes, but it fit her style and it looked beautiful, because _she_ was beautiful and therefore anything she wore would look great.

But Zulema didn’t thought the same about herself.

“Come on! You’ll look guapísima Tia!” she did a little dance while she approached Zulema again, pulling the woman up from the couch and holding the dress against her body.

Saray was still the only person who could make Zulema genuinely smile, the younger woman meant so much to her.

“If it makes you happy, then I love it” she nodded at her friend.

“Yeah, but does it make _you_ happy?” Saray asked, but felt guilty when she looked at her friends face.

She knew that not much made Zule happy, in fact, nothing seemed to make her friend happy nowadays.

“Its beautiful and I like that it makes _you_ happy!” Her friend smiled at her, leading them away from the sorrowful feelings that they both knew were always in the arisen when it came to Zulema.

“I’ll take that” Saray smiled, knowing that she couldn’t expect her friend to be excited about a dress when she wasn’t excited for anything else in her life.

Saray took a deep breath before letting that thought go.

“Then let’s get you set up because the most brilliant photographer in town is here, waiting to immortalize your beauty” Saray excitedly breathed out, pointing at Zule's clothes in a way that let the woman know that she should change into the dress that Saray had offered her.

“Oh, I thought Kabila was taking my picture?” Kabila was Saray's fiancé. They started dating five years ago, a year after Kabila became the main photographer on the magazine that Saray directed.

“It was, but as soon as the word got out that the most commented artist in Switzerland, the amazing Zulema Zahir, would finally show herself in a photoshoot; this woman called me saying that she would love to be the photographer for this issue” Saray exaggerated on her complements.

The younger woman softly laughed before turning away when Zulema did a ‘turn around’ motion with her finger so that she could change into the dress. “And I was going to blow her off, but then she introduced herself as Macarena Ferreiro, and if that woman wants to photograph for your magazine, you let her”

“If she’s such a big shot, why does she want to take my picture? Doesn’t she have more interesting things to do?” Zulema wondered while fussing with the dress, not feeling very comfortable about a complete stranger being so interested in her.

“That, you’ll have to ask her. I’m telling you, if Ferreiro wants to take pictures for your magazine, you just say yes. No questions asked” Saray explained.

“But the word about her is that, even though she’s the most requested photographer around here, she’s a very sweet woman. So you don’t have to worry about dealing with a diva or anything” Saray reassured her friend.

“I just don’t see why a bigshot photographer would be so interested in this... turn around” she said and her friend turned, dramatically gasping and clapping her hands at Zulema.

“You look stunning! A work of art, Zule” she praised, walking around Zulema to make sure she got a good look from every angle.

“I’m glad you liked it, but I don’t know..” Zulema replied in her lower voice looking down at her body. She didn’t particularly enjoy being complemented on her looks, it just automatically made her brain come up with at least six thing that were wrong with her. Like right now she was already thinking that she probably looked ridiculous in the big dress, especially after losing eleven _much needed_ pounds in the last two months, but she spared her friend from her depreciation on herself.

“You’re perfect, and to answer your question; the bigshot photographer wanted to do this so that she could meet the bigshot painter, that never shows her beautiful face" she answered to her friend, pushing her messy-styled hair away from her eyes.

“You are as bigshot as she is, more if you ask me” Saray said while her fingers delicately caressed the woman’s tired features, looking in Zulema’s eyes.

It broke her heart to see the devastation going on behind those green jewels.

“You have to start appreciating yourself, Zule" she saw tears promptly start pooling at Zulema’s eyes, and she pulled her in a hug, holding Zulema's head close to her shoulder while her other arm wrapped around the woman’s torso.

“You’re the most incredible person I’ve ever met, Zulema" she whispered against the woman’s hair “You just have to let it go, Zule. You have to let it go before it takes you under” Saray had a sadden expression on her face. She wished that she could take all of the pain from the woman, so that she could see how much beauty revolves around her.

“I can’t let go, Saray" she whispered, letting her tears fall and pulling her face away from her friend’s shoulder so that she could look her in the eye “It wouldn’t be fair.. I don’t have the right to forget” more tears streamed down her face as she spoke. Her voice was just above a whisper, she felt like she was choking on her feelings once again.

“Sshh" Saray pulled her back in before she spiraled out of control. The younger woman knew how Zulema’s mind could go from barely holding on to full-blown self-destruction mode in a matter of seconds.

“It’s fine Zule, we’ll find a way. I promise” Saray whispered, feeling her throat tighten and her eyes fill up with tears “You shouldn’t feel guilty for being alive, mi amor” she let the tears run free from her eyes.

So much guilt lived inside of her friend, so much sadness and beauty. Portraying Zulema’s story would make the most beautiful and heartbreaking art, but living inside the woman’s head was a punishment that no one deserved.

“You deserve to be happy" Saray finally said, feeling the woman go quiet in her embrace. She reached for Zule’s face and pulled her back, finding her eyes again.

Zulema nodded at her, smiling through her tears.

Saray knew that Zulema didn’t actually agreed with what she’d just said, yet she nodded, because she didn’t want to turn this into a whole thing.

“Vale.. I shouldn’t cry. It’ll ruin Anna’s effort to make me beautiful” she offered a fake smile at Saray, who was now kindly running her fingers over her friends face, drying the tears as best as she could without ruining the light make-up that she had on.

“You’re right, there’s no place for tears of sadness in this magazine” Saray now dried her own face, moving away to get Zulema’s shoes for the photos but quickly returning and holding up black platform shoes that looked really heavy and uncomfortable to Zulema.

The older woman didn’t say anything, she just took the boots out of Saray's hand and moved back to the couch so that she could sit and put them on. Once she was done, she stood again, being surprised by how comfortable the high platforms were.

“You’re ready?” Saray asked, hanging out one of her hands so that her friend would take it.

“I’m ready” Zulema nodded and reached for Saray’s hand.

“Then let’s go see about this photographer.. I think she’ll be really happy to meet you, I heard she’s a fan!” Saray smiled, moving them towards the door and doing her best to make Zule more excited about this job.

“She is?” The artist faked interest and Saray excitedly nodded at her.

“You think she’s already here?” Zulema quietly asked. She took a deep a breath in, so that her chest wouldn’t feel so constricted.

“Well, _she better be_ since the photoshoot was scheduled to start twenty minutes ago" Saray softly laughed, but her friend just offered another one of her fake smiles. She stopped for a second and looked at Zulema, really looked at her, appreciating her for all that she was and all that she wasn’t.

“I love you like you wouldn’t believe Zule, I just wish you could see yourself through my eyes” she said it in her most genuine tone, not waiting for Zulema to respond in any way, because she knew that her friend wouldn’t know what the appropriate response even was. She simply tightened her grip in Zulema’s hand and went back to leading them towards the set where the photographer waited.

Zulema tried to shake away the feeling of being slowly drowning in deep sea while she was surrounded by this amazing girl who could do nothing to save her from it, not without getting dragged down and drowning with her.


	2. Starting point

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested, the background song for this chapter is 'Made Of Stone' by DAUGHTER. 
> 
> so, here's chapter two, I hope you enjoy it.

Zulema and Saray walked into the set, still holding hands. Saray looked at her friend and whispered _You look beautiful,_ and that made Zulema deflect her eyes away from her and slightly blush.

Once they were inside, Zulema immediately spotted the photographer. It wasn’t difficult to do since the set was almost empty, if not for Kabila and the blonde stranger that were sitting across from each other and talking. The photographer’s chair was facing away from Zulema and Saray, while Estefania's chair was positioned towards them.

When Kabila spotted her partner and Zulema walking inside the set, she jumped up from her chair, opening her arms and smiling to welcome them.

The brown-skinned woman walked towards Zulema, with her arms opened as to let Zulema know that she expected a hug.

“Zulema!” Estefania excitedly said once she had wrapped her arms around the woman.

“Hi, Kabila" Zulema smiled with her chin resting on Estefania’s shoulder and her eyes closed to better enjoy the loving embrace. The younger woman had a kind of warmth and genuine happiness, that no one else in the world had and it always made Zulema feel welcomed whenever she was around.

“It’s been ages!” She faintly heard Estefania say and she opened her eyes again, getting back to the present moment. Her eyes roamed the surroundings and settled on the stranger that had turned in her chair and was carefully watching the exchange between the two friends.

The two strangers locked eyes together and just looked at one another, both with unreadable expressions on their faces.

“How long has it been?!” Estefania asked after she pulled Zulema back so that she could look at her.

“Around eight months, I think” Zulema answered, refocusing her attention on her friend but still feeling uneasy about the stranger that continued to stare.

“Tia, why do you disappear like that?!” Estefania asked, but didn’t wait for a reply. She turned towards Saray and kissed the woman’s lips, then she turned around and got her arms around the inseparable duo so that they would all be facing the blonde woman, the one that was still watching them with her upper body turned in her chair.

Rizo’s let her hands rest in the smaller back of both women. She looked at the blonde sitting in front of them and smiled.

“Ladies, this is Macarena Ferreiro” Estefania introduced them, watching Maca’s smile grow big while simultaneously feeling Zulema’s back stiffen under her touch. She briefly looked at her friend with a questioning look, but let it go when Zulema didn’t look back at her.

“She was the sweetest girl in photography class, and now she’s the best photographer in Switzerland... after myself, of course" Rizo's smiled, and Macarena got up from her chair to meet the two strangers.

"There's no one better than you, Rizos" the blonde joked, reaching out her hand to Saray once she was in front of the woman. “Hi, I’m Macarena Ferreiro, but you can call me Maca, everyone does” she shook Saray's hand.

“Hi Maca, I’m Saray Vargas” Saray introduced herself “I’m very excited about you photographing for ‘WS', this issue is going to blow people’s mind and I’m glad you’re a part of it" the magazine’s director smiled.

Macarena smiled back and nodded at Saray, not saying anything else. She then moved to the side until she was standing in front of Zulema, who had been silently watching the photographer.

Now standing face to face, Macarena had a mysterious smile on her face while Zulema just stared at her, trying to figure it out how she felt about the woman who was looking at her like she knew all her deepest secrets.

Seeing that Zulema wasn’t going to introduce herself, Estefania needlessly stepped in “Maca, this is..” but she didn’t have to finish when Maca did it for her.

“Zulema Zahir" Macarena let it flow out of her lips, like it was the most sacred thing “I’m a huge fan of your work” the blonde finally reached her hand out to the brunette, but when Zulema matched the blonde’s move, she didn’t shook it like she did with Saray; she just delicately held it against her own, looking deep in Zulema’s eyes, while Zulema returned the glare with the same vehemence.

Rizo's and Saray watched the exchange between the two women, at the same time amused and confused by the clear intensity of their meeting.

Zulema averted her eyes from the blonde, looking at Saray instead. She was silently asking her friend to help her, but the younger woman had an expression on her face that let her know she was having too much fun with Zulema’s obvious embarrassment and would do nothing to help her.

“Thank you” Zulema finally breathed out, not knowing what else to say to the photographer who was still holding her hand, with the same knowingly smile on her face and her deep hazel eyes locked on Zulema.

After a moment of weird interaction, Maca finally let go of the artist’s hand and looked away from her. She turned to Saray and Rizo’s again “Well now that we’ve properly met, how about we get this work started? Because, _I might be mistaken,_ but I believe we were supposed to have started half an hour ago?” she smiled looking between Saray and Zulema.

“I didn’t know what time you would be here, and I sort of got lost in the building before Saray found me.. I’m sorry for being late, I really didn’t mean to keep you waiting” Zulema promptly apologized, her voice deep and husky, but very calm and sincere.

“I didn’t mind, gave me time to get everything ready and to catch up with Estefania” Maca said, making sure to not let the artist worry about it. “but now, that you’re here and everything’s in the right place, how about we get started?” She directed her question at Zulema, raising her eyebrows in an expectant way. “You’re ready?”

“Yes, sure..” Zulema answered to the blonde, but looked around the set, a bit confused by the emptiness of it “Uhm, there’s no one here... don’t you have assistants or production people to help you with your work?” Zulema asked. She didn’t know much about the photographic field, but she knew that the more recognition a person had in their careers, the more they needed other people to be constantly surrounding them and providing them with anything that they ever needed.

“No, Just me” the photographer answered “And you two need to go” she said pointing at Rizos and Saray, who were silently watching them.

Saray's arm was resting around Rizos, and Rizos had her head lying against the woman's shoulder.

“Tía, no te gusta a mi o algo así?”Saray joked making Rizos and Maca softly laugh. She glanced at her friend and noticed how Zulema’s body language was tense. The woman hated being in a room with just one other person with her, it put her in a position where she’d have to at least try to be social and make small talk, which she absolutely dreaded. 

“No, nothing like that” Maca answered, softly smiling at Saray “I just need to be alone with my model. Otherwise, my work won’t be as good” the photographer explained.

Saray looked at Zulema, her friend looked really anxious about being left alone with the photographer “How about I’ll stay, right there in a little corner, and I’ll be quiet enough that you won’t even notice me?” Saray tried, not wanting to leave Zulema more uncomfortable with the photoshoot than she already was.

“You got a thing for watching, Ms. Vargas?” Macarena joked, but she had noticed the glances that Saray had given towards Zulema. She understood that for some reason the director didn’t want to leave the artist alone in the room.

“Zulema, when you’re painting, do you enjoy being watched? Or does it make you feel disconnected from your creative process?” She directed her attention to Zulema now, who had been looking down at the floor but soon looked up to meet the blonde’s eyes.

“I never have company when I’m creating” Zulema answered. It made her remember a happier time, a time when she always had company while she created something. Her art wasn’t as good back then, she also didn’t spent her days and nights in front of a screen, using colors to pour out her feeling, no; back then, her art was, to most people and to herself, a boring thing. _but she was happy_.

“Happiness is an extremely uneventful subject, don’t you think?” The words flowed out of her lips before she could stop them, making Saray and Rizos raise their eyebrows at how random and unexpected that was.

But the photographer just smiled, in that intriguing way that she did, and nodded “But it’s better to be bored from excessive happiness, than to be fascinated by chaotic feelings, no?” Maca asked, looking deep in Zulema’s eyes again.

“Sometimes I enjoy the chaos, sometimes I thrive on it..” Zulema answered. She was surprised by her own honesty and lack of filter, but the blonde’s piercing eyes, somehow just made her feel compelled to tell the truth “I’m never as creative as I am when I feel all of the ugly feelings that people are constantly running away from"

They stared at one another, like they were daring each other to be honest.

“I feel the same, I’m much more creative when I allow myself to feel all of my edges, but… At the end of the day, you either created something beautiful or you didn’t, it doesn’t truly matter, the only thing that matters is; were you happy or unhappy during the hours you were given" Maca replied, shrugging her arms and smiling, thinking that it was really that simple.

Zulema kept looking at the woman, not smiling back, just thinking about her words; what a fascinating concept the blonde had about life.

Saray looked between the two of them, her eyebrow raised and a smile on her face, Rizos had the same expression.

Zulema was not the kind of person who felt comfortable enough to freely talk about those kinds of things with someone that she had just met, _or with anyone for that matter_ , so Saray was very pleased, but also very surprised, to see the two strangers talking like they were friends already. 

“Well.. maybe we should get going then” The director said after she cleared her throat, to remind the women that they weren’t alone yet.

“We really got a lot of things that need to be done, Zule” Rizos completed, her expression saying that she was sorry, but she really had to go.

“Ok, I’ll see you guys when we get done?” Zulema asked while Saray was already hugging her goodbye.

“Pues claro, just call me and I’ll come find you.” Saray nodded at her friend, stepping back so that Rizos could also hug the woman before they left.

“Ok” Zulema breathed out, and watched as the two girls said goodbye to the photographer and then walked out of the set.

* * *

Once they were out in the hallway, Saray and Rizos looked at each other, communicating with their eyes like they did.

“So, I’m not imagining it, am I?” Saray asked to her partner once they started walking the long hallway.

“No, there was so much intense energy that it made me feel uncomfortable” Rizos softly laughed, stopping in front of her girlfriend “Oh Zulema, I’m such a fan of your work but you’re so very chaotic” Rizos mocked trying to replicate Maca’s voice.

“Macarena, let’s talk about chaos and undress each other with our eyes” Saray joked along. They both laughed when Rizos almost fell after she attempted to walk backwards so that she could continue joking and looking at Saray’s face at the same time “Be careful, Rizos” Saray said, using her grip on her partner’s arms to prevent her from falling, then turning her body in the right direction.

“Being careful is no fun, besides I got you to catch me before I fall” the brown girl smiled, but allowed Saray to turn her around and felled in sync with her girlfriend’s steps, walking by her side.

“But seriously, is Macarena into women or something like that?” Saray asked, going back to their previous thoughts about the women’s interaction.

“I didn’t think so, but I mean, she might be? She was seriously eye-fucking Zulema” Rizos laughed, exaggerating the facts.

“She wasn’t eye-fucking Zulema, Rizos. But there was some obvious interest in the way she looked at Zule.. I don’t know, she just seemed gay to me” Saray shrugged.

“Maybe she is” Rizos answered, shrugging in the same way that Saray had.

“You guys studied together, what do you know about her?” Saray fished for information. She wanted to know more about the woman, not because the blonde seemed interested in Zulema, but because Zulema seemed interested by the photographer and she wanted to make sure that Macarena was a nice person before Zulema and her became friends or anything of the sorts.

“Well, she was your typical blonde beauty” Rizos said, like she expected Saray to understand that concept.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Saray asked looking confused by her partner’s explanation. Rizos couldn’t help but laugh at Saray’s facial expression.

“She was friendly with everyone, she was very pretty and very kind, all the boys wanted her.. and so did a few of the girls. wink wink” Rizos answered, laughing again at Saray’s face that went from confused to amused in a matter of seconds.

“Qué pasa? has tenido un crush en la rubita?” Saray raised her eyebrows, looking at Rizos instead of looking to the endless hallway that they still walked.

“I did! But the rubita was all about studying” Rizos teased, still softly laughing “honestly, no one ever got to date Maca, she was friendly to everyone but she wasn’t friends with anyone, she had a lot of people wanting to date her, but no one was ever given the opportunity. She wanted to study and in the weekends that she didn’t have to study; you would find her sitting by some tree reading a book, or bicycling in a park”

“So she’s kind of boring? Boring is good, we can work with boring” Saray nodded “And she’s definitely straight, I guess that's good too. She could become friends with Zule then” Saray was now just thinking out loud, stopping when Rizos interrupted her thoughts.

“I never said that she was boring, she’s the most ‘it’ photographer in Switzerland, that doesn’t go with the word ‘boring’.. And I have absolutely no idea on what her sexual preferences are” Rizos replied to Saray’s blabbering before getting a more serious tone for her next words “And you need to let go of this over-protective feelings that you have towards Zulema, she’s not a little girl, she can handle things on her own”

“People can be boring and be great at their chosen careers, mi amor; haven’t you met Bob from accounting?? And how could she ever be straight and not fall head over heels for a flirty twenty-something Rizos?” Saray answered, smiling and choosing to ignore, for the time being, the last words that came out of Rizos mouth.

“You do make a compelling argument!” They finally made it through the hallway, surprised that they didn’t smashed their bodies against all the people that passed by them when they were so distracted with their conversation.

They were silent for a moment, going towards the elevators in the spacious room, that had floor-to-ceiling glass windows, right where the hallway ended.

“You’re going up or down?” Rizos asked before she pushed the button and waited for the elevator to arrive, but Saray was already caught up in her own thoughts and silence filled the space between the two women for a few seconds.

“I know she’s not a little girl, but she’s fragile, Rizos. You weren’t there, you don’t know everything.” She said it in a serious tone, while they watched the numbers slowly going down on the elevator, letting them know that they still had a couple of seconds before the thing arrived.

“It took me a long time to help Zulema get back on her feet, it was tiring and it was heartbreaking to see my friend like that. God knows that I would do it all again, a hundred times if I had to; but I sure as hell going to do everything in my power to never ‘have to’ again. So of course, I will check out every person that even looks at Zulema in a funny way, and you have to stop calling me out on it, because... you don't know just how low Zulema can go.” Saray breathed out her answer to the question that she had momentarily ignored, her eyes meeting Rizos, just as the elevator’s doors opened in front of them.

“And I’m going up” She let Rizos know.

The younger woman quietly nodded, feeling a bit uncomfortable with how heavy the light conversation had turned out to be.

“I’m going down” Rizos answered, getting inside the elevator.

“Vale, I’ll see you later” Saray pushed the button to call another elevator and watched Rizos, slightly smiling at her, until the doors closed. 

* * *

Zulema was standing by the white background while the photographer dimmed the lights of the studio until it was pleasing to her.

She intently watched the blonde that was now approaching her again.

“It’s much better like this, isn’t it?” The photographer asked, coming closer to Zulema. _Too close in Zulema’s opinion._

“It’s darker” The painter answered, looking up to meet the blonde’s eyes and just then realizing how their faces were inches apart from touching. She was surprised and automatically took a step back, which didn’t help because the blonde took a step forward at the same time, not allowing Zulema to put space between them.

“You’re too old to be so shy” Macarena nonchalantly said. She then moved her fingertips to brush away the locks of hair that were getting in the way of Zulema’s face, looking at the Artist’s features while the woman looked at Macarena’s fingers, that were lightly touching her skin.

The woman had a warm touch, sweet and very mindful, unlike the cold and disconcerting words that kept leaving the blonde’s mouth.

They said nothing for a second, then Macarena turned around and moved until she was standing by the tripod of her camera.

Zulema was holding both of her hands together, and she was just looking at the blonde, with an expression that could be defined as either tiredness or sadness.

Then the first ‘click’ sound ran through the set, catching Zulema off guard.

“I didnt know we had started” Zulema said to the photographer, letting her hands separate and stay tightly by her sides, not knowing what to do with them.

“We started since you walked into this set, I’m just printing you in the camera now” Maca had one of her eyes closed while the other looked through the camera’s lens.

Zulema looked down at her shoes.

Another click.

“I would appreciate if you let me know before shooting that thing” She snapped, speaking louder than she had in a long time, then immediately regretting it, not knowing where that had come from “I'm sorry"

“I don’t care... look at the camera” the blonde instructed, and Zulema did.

The blonde changed the settings on the equipment so that she would see the image on the led screen instead of being bowed down to look in the lens.

She stood up straight, looking at Zulema “You look tense” Macarena let the brunette know.

“I don’t mean to” Zulema shrugged, trying to shake off the tension.

“it’s funny how meaning or not meaning to do something; means nothing” The blonde softly smirked, looking up to the brunette’s serious face “Like; I don’t _mean_ to make you uncomfortable. But that doesn’t mean anything because I do it just the same, right?”

“You do” Zulema agreed, gripping her sweaty hands against the fabric of the dress, hoping that the photographer wouldn’t notice the small movement, but closing her eyes in defeat when she heard yet another click.

She was still trying to find out why Saray said that this photographer was a very sweet woman, because all that the woman had done so far was taunt her.

“Why?” the blonde asked, but she knew why, she did it in every photoshoot that she ever had, although she also knew that she was far more invested in this one than in any of the others

“Because your words don’t have filters, and you keep looking at me like you know who I am" Zulema blurted out.

“I think I do know who you are..” Another click at Zulema’s frustrated expression “Does that bother you?” Macarena questioned.

“It does, because you don’t” Zulema looked deep in Macarena's eyes and the photographer smiled before clicking the equipment's button again.

“You’re right, I don’t” Macarena was still smirking. She realized that a tripod wasn’t the best choice for this photoshoot, so she went back behind the camera and untangled it from the supporting equipment “And that’s why we should go out for coffee after this" she nodded, half of her face hidden behind the camera.

“No" Zulema instantly replied even though she was really taken back by the _‘was it an invitation?’_ weird suggestion that the blonde made.

“Don’t say no so quickly, you might change your mind” Macarena shrugged her shoulders, looking down at the camera. She lowered the ISO setting and opened the image sensor before she took another picture.....

“You have the most alluring eyes, Zulema” Maca honestly complemented the artist, with kindness that she hadn’t showed before.

Macarena had taken one picture after the other, saying a thing or two to Zulema in between clicks.

“Thank you” Zulema answered, feeling really exposed and out of her comfort zone “Can we take a break?”

Macarena looked at the woman and saw that she looked pretty tired already. She looked at the camera again and went through the pictures that she had gotten so far; she had captured a lot of emotions already, but still had a couple to go.

“We can, but we’re almost done. So if you think we can continue, you’ll be free to go in a minute” The blonde breathed out.

Now came the hardest part, the part where she would push where it hurt. She didn’t enjoy it, but sometimes she was inconsiderable like that; she would push a person until she could capture the emotion that she was looking for.

“Vale, let’s get this over with” Zulema nodded, and positioned herself perfectly still in front of the camera “what do you need me to do?”

Macarena took a deep breath and stood there, just looking at Zulema for a second.

“I don’t really know” The photographer answered, knowing exactly what she wanted from the artist, but also knowing that she couldn’t ask for it.

“Should I smile?” Zulema asked, hoping for some direction from the woman holding up the big camera.

“Do you want to smile?” Maca answered with a question of her own, looking through the lens and zooming in, until only Zulema’s face was in the shot.

“I might seem friendlier if I do” The brunette honestly replied.

“Are you friendlier?” another ‘click' sound burst from the camera.

“No” zulema shook her head, looking directly at the camera lenses, knowing that the blonde was watching her through it.

“Then don’t seem it” Maca briefly looked up from the camera when she answered.

Zulema breathed out, getting frustrated with the other woman. She walked past the blonde like she was about to leave, and Macarena watched her, not saying or doing anything, just looking, with a surprised and confused expression on her face.

Zulema went around the room until she found a big office chair that had wheels on it and brought it with her, going back to the white background and dragging the chair along, finally settling it in the same place that she was standing before and sitting down on it, while Maca watched her with a smirk on her face.

“Now we can continue, and I won’t try to look friendly” The artist said. Her facial expression was closed off and her body relaxed into the comfortable chair.

Macarena fixed the setting on the camera again, then she lowered her body until she was in the same height as Zulema. It was an uncomfortable position, but it made all the difference in the final photograph.

Maca took a deep breath and let it out, snapping another picture of a much more laid back Zulema.

“You sold your first oil-painting in ‘Lia's gallery’ when you were seventeen” Macarena told Zulema like the brunette didn’t already know “But you’ve been painting since you were a child. Your work became really successful when you did an exhibition on human’s emotions. It was Beautiful because it was so frighteningly realistic and ugly”

 **“** So you’re really a fan" Zulema thought out loud, and just looked at the blonde in the same way that she did before.

“You were at the peak of your career... and then you disappeared, didn’t do any exhibition, didn’t released any new painting. You went AWOL and because no one knew anything about the artist behind the art, no one could even look for you” Macarena continued to blabber those facts. She watched the way that Zulema was almost completely relaxed in the chair and waited for the right moment, to give her final blow.

“You were gone for fifteen years, some people even thought that you had died...” Maca softly laughed and Zulema matched her, letting the photographer know that she had her exactly where she wanted.

“Then you came back, four years ago... your first piece after so many years of absence was ‘A Thousand Miles To Nowhere’ ” the blonde finally said.

Other people wouldn’t have noticed the small in which Zulema’s body reacted, but Maca did; jaw slightly clenched down, eyes briefly looked down at her hands, eyebrows twitched, ever so lightly, and she fixed herself up on the chair.

“That was never meant to be seen by others, it was meant to be only mine” She bit her lower lip, remembering how upset she'd been when she realized that the painting was gone.

“I was at that exhibition, I was very excited that your art was back so I got myself an invitation to be there. That was the first piece that I saw at the gallery and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it; it was haunting. I stood there looking at it for what felt like hours before managing to get away. I actually cried”

“That painting was never meant to be seen by others” Zulema repeated, in a lower, sadder tone.

“And again; that’s the thing about _meaning_ or _not meaning_ ” Macarena said, reminding the artist of her earlier remarks, while she carefully zoomed in with her camera.

“You said you cried.. why?” Zulema whispered her question.

“Because, between the abstract settings, the icy colors and warm arises, I knew what you were painting about” Macarena didn’t take any pictures, she just silently waited.

“I tried to get that painting back, once I realized it was gone, but when I got to the gallery the girl that had organized the event told me that three people had bid on it” Zulema blurted through a haunted tone. She got up from the chair and moved a bit to the side, trying to decide if she should leave or not.

Macarena got up along with Zulema, still looking at the woman through the camera, but diminishing the zoom, realizing that a chest-to-face picture would look better.

“And the person who outbid and got the painting paid in cash and didn’t leave any contact information, so I was never able to find it again” Zulema finished, still deflecting from what she really wanted to ask to the blonde woman ‘ _What was it about?’_

“Death” Macarena breathed out “It was about death” she looked away from the camera for a moment, meeting Zulema’s intense stare, and seeing the tears that instantly started pooling in her green eyes.

Zulema's body was slightly shaking in response to the passive-aggressive energy that emanated from the photographer.

“What do you want from me?” The artist finally asked.

Macarena got her eyes behind the camera again, one eye closed so that she other could concentrate only on the image that she saw inside the heavy equipment.

“The truth” the photographer answered in a hushed tone. 

Zulema felt warmth running fast through her body, making her heart skip a beat. Her face flushed with color and her body got ready to flee the scene. 

But instead of running, she just stared directly at the camera, letting out a deep breath and feeling herself getting numb again. 

“Just take your damn picture”.

Two lone tears slide down from Zulema's eyes.

One last click echoed through the secluded set.


	3. Glamorized Thieves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested, the background song for this chapter is 'seventeen ft norah jones' 
> 
> Let me know if I should make smaller chapters bc this is quite long (5000+words).
> 
> comments make me happy, so leave one :)

Zulema looked around café, letting her eyes settle on a couple that were sitting a few tables over. They were lightly caressing each other’s hands and the young man had leaned in to give the girl a sweet kiss on the lips, Zulema looked away then, feeling like she was intruding on an intimate moment that didn’t belong to her.

“It’s a beautiful thing to be in love" Maca said, sitting down by the table and handing Zulema her coffee. She looked to where Zulema was looking before, while the brunette, in turn, looked at the blonde in front of her.

“Have you been in love?” Zulema asked, getting Maca’s attention back to their table. The brunette picked up the coffee that the photographer had brought to her and softly thanked her before taking a sip.

“I haven’t, but I photographed it many times" Macarena answered, taking a sip of her own coffee and asking the same question to Zulema “Have _you_ been in love?”

Zulema mildly smiled at the question, remembering how it felt to be in love, how it made her feel so incredibly happy and gave so much meaning to her days “I have” she nodded.

Macarena smiled with the other woman. She hadn’t yet seen the brunette sincerely smiling and she found it to be one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen.

“Tell me about it” She prompted, looking back at the couple that were still kindly touching each other by the far table in the rustic coffee place “I might never actually feel it, so I content myself with stealing it from others in every way that I can” Maca breathed out.

“Oh, there it is. That’s the word I’ve been looking for.. to describe the way that you photograph” Zulema nodded her head “it’s _‘stealing’_.. just plainly stealing things from other people, robbing them of their truth and then apologizing for it” Maca looked back at Zulema, catching the woman’s eyes and holding it against her own in a intense stare competition.

_As the last ‘click’ echoed through the air and the job was completed, the blonde finally snapped out of her photographer mode, still looking at Zulema through the camera and immediately rethinking her methods._

_She had always done this, ever since she stopped photographing nature and started photographing people, she learned how to get what she wanted out of her models._

_She would search about them, some she did it with more interest than others, and she would always learn all that she could about the models before ever meeting them. When she finally met them, she would figure out what would be the best way to get them rattled; she would analyze the kind of shooting they were doing and then decide the best approach to get the emotions that she desired to see._

_Because of that most of her models left the set hating her, or just really upset, but they would quickly let go of it when they received the final result of the photoshoot, because in all honestly; she could photograph people like no other photographer that she had ever met, and all a model ever wants is to get good photos and feel like they were really seen. She gave that to them. She wasn't afraid of upsetting them, she also didn’t care about how much she was getting paid or how much of a diva her subject was, she would push until she got what she wanted. No matter the consequences as long as she was satisfied with the outcome. And she always was._

_But she didn’t feel that the same would apply to the artist that was standing in front of her. She wanted the good results in the photographs just like she always did, but this time she cared about how she got to those results. She felt bad for upsetting the woman, she didn’t like it this time around, it didn’t feel right, it didn’t feel excusable._

_Macarena lifted her face away from the lens and turned off the camera, letting the artist know that she was done. She watched the brunette with such curiosity; the woman had a blank expression on her face, her body completely still, the only thing showing that she hadn’t completely disconnected her body from her mind was those deep green eyes, that kept overflowing with tears, before it slid down the woman’s face._

_Macarena slowly approached, like she was approaching a wild animal instead of a crying woman. First she went towards the chair that the artist had previously brought there, laying her camera down, then she took a deep breath before moving closer and carefully wrapping her arms around the brunette, like she was made of porcelain and might just break inside the embrace._

_Macarena held her close, letting their body's warmth become one and their heartbeats fall in sync._

_After a moment she felt Zulema’s arms coming up, to fully accept the hug. The woman finally struck out and allowed herself to cry, a full-blown cry against Macarena’s shoulder, while Macarena didn’t move at all. She just held the artist, with a surprised expression on her face and her own eyes filling with tears that she quickly pushed back in, knowing that she couldn’t steal one more emotion from the other woman._ _“Please forgive me"_

Macarena breathed in, still holding Zulema’s gaze against her own.

“We artist are all just a bunch of glamorized thieves” Macarena answered “We are constantly stealing something from someone or somewhere; You steal people’s lives and paint them as if they are your own” The photographer shrugged “I steal people’s emotion and freeze it in time inside a photograph, and normally I don’t apologize for it.... But we’re equal, you're not better and I’m not worse” she finished, breaking the silence between them but not looking away from Zulema’s eyes.

Zulema took a deep breath and slightly nodded “All artists are glamorized thieves”

“Yeah, so quit being judgy.. Your art has made me cry at least once, you don’t see me being a baby about it” The photographer smiled, lightning the mood for both of them.

“Why did you become a photographer?” Zulema asked before drinking from her coffee mug.

“Thirteen-year-old me fell in love with the glamour that comes from doing anything artistic" Macarena smiled at the memory of her teenage years “I wanted no business with being a thief though, it was all about the glamour” the blonde softly laughed at the pleasant innocence that she once had.

“How so?” Zulema asked, looking at the blonde and feeling curious to know what memories lie behind that interesting head.

“Well, I realized I liked photographing the nature and all the little things in it, so my mother gifted me with my first DSLR camera on my thirteen birthday and I flipped over it” Maca grinned, being able to see her younger self and her amazing mother, like it had happened yesterday and not a whole other life ago.

“From the moment I got it, I was inseparable with it, I took pictures everywhere that I went. Then, one time I presented some of my pictures in an art project at school and almost everyone loved it" Maca continued to freely relive her past while Zulema quietly observed.

“And you know how young people are easily impressed, so from that moment until my last day of school people called me ‘the photographer’ and it felt so glamorous to a young, impressionable me... so I went to art school... I studied photography... I taught photography and now I’m here, feeling mislead by all the photographers that didn’t warn me about the stealing that always came before the glamour” Maca breathed out, smiling when she looked at Zulema’s face and saw that the woman had been watching her like she was just telling the most interesting story ever.

“What about you? Why did you become an artist?” Macarena turned the question to Zulema who was caught off guard and looked extremely disappointed that the photographer had already finished her story.

Zulema shrugged her shoulder in a nonchalant way “Couldn’t do math” then looked down at her mug of coffee and considered getting up to get more of the dark drink that was almost gone, but before she could finish the thought, she heard the blonde’s half-suppressed laugh and quickly looked up, with her eyebrows furrowing.

“Was that funny?” She asked being genuinely curious, and the fact that she didn’t understood it just made Macarena laugh more “I don’t get it” she added.

“I, like all artistic person ever, just told you a whole childhood story on why I became an artist” Maca said, grinning at the brunette “And I cannot, for the life of me, recall one single time that I asked an even remotely famous artist why they had decided to pursue a career in the artistic field, and the answer wasn’t something along the lines of ‘life is art’ ‘art saved my life’ or ‘I didn’t choose art, art chose me’... so, I guess I just wasn’t expecting such an honest and simple answer” Macarena explained, still softly laughing.

Zulema watched and her smile came automatically from hearing the photographer laugh.

The blonde shook her head at Zulema after she finally stopped her small burst of laughter. She took another sip of her coffee and realized that the mug was quickly getting empty.

“Well, if honesty is what you want” Zulema breathed out “I became an artist because I was starved for affection” Zulema let out a breathy laugh. Her words made Macarena look up from her mug with a confused look on her face.

“What do you mean?” The blonde questioned with her eyebrows furrowed.

“Well, my second-grade teacher...” Zulema started but got distracted before finishing “Sorry.. I’m just going to get some more coffee and then I’ll finish that story... do you need a refill too?” she asked to a confused Macarena, while she was already getting up from the table and taking her empty mug with her.

“Well? Do you want a refill?” Zulema asked again.

“I do” Maca answered after downing the remain of her coffee. She handed her mug to Zulema and watched as the artist walked away, a silly smile on her face that she simply couldn’t contain.

After a second the photographer snapped out of her dreamy gaze and looked down at the table instead. She noticed that there were initials carved in there, it was difficult to see because it had been painted over, but they were there, and it made her smile again, imagining that a couple of teens had probably done that as a way to scream at the world that they were in love without letting their parents hear it...

“Here” Zulema offered the mug to the blonde, sitting down again.

“What happened?” Macarena asked as soon as the artist had sat back in her chair.

“What do you mean?” Zulema answered with another question, a tone just slightly less bright than it had been a minute ago.

“You were going to tell me about your second-grade teacher, you were excited” the photographer pointed out “Now you look like you’re about to run back inside that seashell you live in” she finished, looking at Zulema’s eyes and seeing her already starting to retreat.

“I don’t live in a seashell” Zulema breathed out.

Truth was, Zulema went to get their coffee and while the lady that had taken her order was taking her time in filling the mugs; she got distracted and looked up to where the coffee machines and tea boxes where, and she was so distracted by all the flavors of tea that she didn’t realize that the whole wall where those things were settled against, was actually a mirror. She also hadn’t realized that the lady had come back with the two mugs, nor did she realized that she had been looking at her own reflection for a whole minute before she recognized herself.

“Why do you look so sad? You were gone for no more than five minutes” Macarena insisted, in the same slightly less bright tone as Zulema had.

“My teacher used to kiss the top of the head of every student that did their homework correctly, and the damn thing had to always be about ‘add this’ and ‘subtract that', I couldn’t do math so she would just run her fingers against my hair in a comforting manner instead of just giving me a damn kiss..” Zulema answered instead, not wanting to explain why seeing her own reflection in a mirror was such a difficult thing for her nowadays and also not wanting to even recognize that she just saw her face for the first time in months and was just shook by it. The photographer seemed to be satisfied by the return of the previous subject and so Zulema continued.

“But one time we had an art homework, supposed to draw our family... and I was so upset that she would even ask us to do that.. I drew a scorpion instead, I did it perfectly and I even did a colorful background, spent the whole night on it so I could show it to her in the next morning, look her in the eyes and say ‘I didn’t do what you asked for, and I don’t care about your stupid kisses anymore’ ” Zulema smiled, remembering her childhood stupidity.

“And then?” Maca queried, wanting to know more about Zulema’s story but not wanting to be abrasive about it.

“Then, she was stunned that a seven-year-old had the ability to draw like that, she thought my mom had done it, but I promised her that it had been me and she believed me. She just looked at me like she was amazed and told me that I had a gift... I didn’t understand” Zulema’s husky laugh came out again and Macarena couldn’t help the big smile that made its way into her face. “I said to her ‘ _if its socks I don’t even want it’_ and she burst out into laughter, I was confused but forgot to ask anything when she pulled me in a tight hug” Zulema finished her story, feeling heavier than she did before.

“You started drawing more... so that she would hug you” Maca guessed and Zulema nodded, both taking deep breaths so that they wouldn’t choke on their emotions.

“And you know, after I realized that making art was a great way to escape a hard reality... It became my safe space so I never stopped doing it.. even when I took that break, I was still creating something new almost every day... and my art was the only thing that kept me from losing my mind in the last few years” Zulema added. She looked down at her mug to escape the hazel eyes that wouldn’t give her a break from its intensity.

“Have you released any of the things that you created while you were on hiatus?” Macarena asked, deciding to ignore Zulema's last comment as she figured that it was something that she would find out about in some other time.

“I destroyed them all” Zulema whispered in response, not liking the visual memory that she got of herself destroying all of her art in one bad night.

The artist took a deep breath, then exhaled, before looking up at the blonde again.

“Macarena, this has been a pleasant meeting.. my opinion about you definitely took a different turn than I thought it would, back when you were making me cry so that you could photograph it" Zulema teased, earning a smile from the photographer.

“But I need to head back to the magazine, I still need to see Saray and I feel emotionally drained right now” She honestly said, raising her eyebrows and smiling at her current lack of filter “so drained that I’m sharing my feelings with a stranger, like this is some kind of therapy thing”

“You could just call Saray and tell her you’re too tired, I’ll drive you home" Maca nodded, being understanding of the woman’s current state, even though she really wished that they could just sit there and talk for hours on end.

“No, I already said that I would go back after getting coffee with you.. she’s probably waiting for me” Zulema explained to the photographer, while she got up from the table.

Zulema stared at Macarena until the blonde realized that the woman expected her to get up too, since she was the one who drove them there….

“I’ll send you the photos once they’re done, just send me your address” Macarena offered, seeing Zulema momentarily glancing at her while they walked away from the café.

They walked in silent until they were almost reaching Macarena’s car and Zulema decided to finally answer the offer.

“I don’t want the photos” The woman said.

“Why not?” Maca asked, but the brunette just shrugged “You will never get a more honest photograph of yourself than the ones I got today” the blonde added with no false modesty.

“That’s exactly why” Zulema retorted, looking at the blonde that was walking by her side. Macarena met the brunette eyes and nodded before looking down at the pavement again.

“I truly think that you should get at least one copy, but if you don’t want it that’s fine, we can jus-"

“And I don’t want to see you again” Zulema cut Maca words before the blonde could finish them.

They kept walking, in complete silence.

Macarena pressed the button that she was holding in her hands so that it would unlock the car, Zulema went to the passenger side and got inside, short followed by the photographer.

“Why not?” the blonde inquired once they were inside the vehicle. She turned the car on but waited for a reply, looking at Zulema while the woman stared ahead.

“Because you ask too many questions, and I always feel compelled to answer them.. like I don’t even have a choice” Zulema pulled her seatbelt on, looking out the window and waiting for the blonde to start driving.

“I really am tired" she whispered after a moment, realizing the photographer was still looking at her and made no moves to start driving them away from the café.

“You always have a choice, Zulema” Macarena answered, following the woman’s actions and pulling on her seatbelt before she started driving the car away. She briefly glanced at the passenger side, the brunette was still looking out the window and seeming completely exhausted.

“You’re making one right now, and let me tell you; it’s the wrong one” Macarena’s words made Zulema look back at her for a second.

“It might be... but still..” Zulema shrugged, turning her attention back to the window and seeing rain slowly began to pour down in a calm and relaxing way.

\----------

They drove in complete silence after that, the only sound that they heard for the whole twenty minutes was the calm sound of rain pouring down and the tires crossing the wet pavement.

Zulema was completely relaxed by the calmness of it all, she didn’t even realised that they had arrived, not until the blonde finally told her, after they’ve been in the parking lot for about five minutes and the artist hadn't moved at all.

“May I get one last truthful answer?” Macarena broke the silence again, turning off the engine on her car.

Zulema didn’t say anything but she nodded in the affirmative, turning away from the window and setting her eyes on intense hazel ones. Macarena nodded as well but instead of asking a question, she just opened her side of the door and went towards the trunk of the car, getting her hair and coat all wet before she finally got the umbrella and opened it, to shield her away from the heavy drops of rain.

She closed the trunk and went to the passenger side, opening the door for Zulema and using the umbrella to cover the woman as she stepped out of the car.

Zulema was looking at the blonde with an unreadable expression as the woman offered her arm so that the artist would hold on to it and keep herself under the umbrella.

They walked towards the building, not talking for a while; just watching the rain wash everything around them.

“What were you going to ask?” Zulema quietly wondered, her voice almost muffed by the steady raindrops, but Macarena heard it.

Maca watched the woman, briefly glancing at the hands that were so very delicately holding onto her forearm.

“Earlier, you said that the painting, that you weren’t able to recover, was never meant to be seen by anyone” Macarena said as they continued to walk towards the tall building “How did it get out?” the blonde asked.

“By accident” Zulema answered, before the blonde looked at her and she realized that the photographer wanted a more explanatory answer “The organizer of that exposition did everything for me; she said I just needed to leave the paintings by the easiest room to access and let her people in so that they could take it to the gallery” The artist recounted. 

“And so I did, I left the door opened when the girl had called to say that her team were just around my block.. I locked myself in the room while they took it all out.. I don’t know what happened, that piece wasn’t even close to the others, it was in the same room but it was by the left corner while the others were all set by the right wall _as I said that they would be_..” Zulema frowned at herself, biting her lower lip.

“When I came out of my room, they were already gone and I didn’t even think about it, I just went on with my day.. and then at night I wanted to see that painting, maybe do something more with it.. but when I looked for it, I couldn’t find it. I realized it must had been taken to the gallery by mistake, so I just took my wallet and left, in my pajamas and everything” the artist softly smiled, but the smile quickly disappeared to be replaced by an expression of tiredness and sorrow.

“But two idiots had bid on it and so it was sold" Macarena complemented Zulema’s story with the information that the artist had offered to her earlier.

Zulema nodded “I never got to see it again.. I could never even try to replicate it; it would be too disrespectful to try” she took a deep breath to rid herself of the melancholic feeling.

“And it was three idiots that had bid on it” Zulema finished, correcting Macarena’s words just as they arrived at the large entry of the building.

Zulema looked at the photographer, she let go of the woman’s arm and stood in front of her.

The both of them were still under the umbrella, even though they were already protected from the rain by the building entryway. They still stood under it, looking at each other for a moment.

“Do you want me to walk you up?” The blonde offered. She wasn’t ready to let go of the other woman, but she knew that it wasn’t her choice, especially when she saw the tiredness behind Zulema's eyes. 

“Goodbye, Macarena” The artist touched Maca’s arm one last time before turning away and walking inside the building. Macarena stood there looking at the alluring brunette walk away.

She stood there until Zulema got inside an elevator and couldn’t be seen anymore, then she finally turned around and went back towards her car, already missing Zulema’s presence.

When she got inside the car, she tossed the umbrella in the backseat with little care. She turned the car on, both of her hands on the steering wheel; she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, letting the scent that the woman had left behind fill her lungs.

Her car now smelled like Zulema; just very sweet and delicate but at the same time very powerful.

“I’m fucked” Macarena said to no one when she finally started to drive away from their starting point.

* * *

“Done! Now we can go” Saray exclaimed as she finally finished tipping on the keyboard of her computer. Zulema had been quietly sitting in the big and comfortable chair, set right in front of Saray’s big wooden desk “didn’t you said you guys drank about a whole bottle of coffee? Why do you look like you’re about to pass out in that chair?” Saray smirked at her friend.

“It’s too comfortable” Zulema whispered, opening only one eye to look at Saray when she answered, but quickly closing it again.

Saray snickered at her friend, watching the woman so clearly relaxed in her office. She picked up a random paper in her desk and pretended to be reading it before breezily asking “So... How was it with the photographer?”

Zulema opened her eyes again, feeling sorry for doing it; she was just so exhausted from the heavy and emotional day she had.

“It was fine” The artist answered, not feeling like she wanted to discuss it at length how very disconcerting the whole encounter with the blonde woman had been.

“You guys went for coffee and were gone for a long time, you have to give me something more than ‘ _fine_ ’ ” Saray pushed, abandoning the paper that she’d been pretending to read and looking up at Zulema.

“Saray... why does it matter? We're not going to see each other again, and that’s the main point of it” Zulema breathed out, fixing herself up on the chair so that she was sitting up straight again “Honestly; this day has been so tiring, that I can’t think of anything other than going home, taking a bath and then going to sleep for the next fifteen hours” the older woman replied In her low husky voice, closing her eyes.

Saray didn’t really have to look at her friend to know that the woman was telling the truth, her voice sounded lower than it normally did and she was dragging her words.

“Vale Tia, let’s get you home” The younger woman nodded, getting up from her chair and getting the car keys and her phone out of the left drawer on her desk. “come on now, I’m not going to carry you” she said when she was already walking past Zulema and the woman still hadn't moved to get out of the chair.

“Vale, let’s go” Zulema replied but still had her eyes closed.

Saray looked at the woman still sitting there and then looked at the jar of water that was laying by the far left of her desk, she went towards it, dipping her fingers inside and then sprinkling it in Zulema’s face.

“Joder! Saray!” Zulema immediately opened her eyes when the water hit her face and chest, looking up at the woman that was heartily laughing about her child actions.

“When will you grow up?” Zulema asked but softly laughed along with her friend, finally getting up from her chair, moving towards the desk that Saray was standing by and getting some paper towels to dry the little drops of water on her face.

“Now that you’re fully awake" Saray snickered, earning herself a playful push from Zulema that was now standing in the same position as she was; leaning her lower body against the wooden table and facing towards the exit door

“Why did you say that you weren't going to see the photographer again? I thought you guys had hit it off” The younger woman asked.

Zulema took another deep breath and shook her head “Why are you so curious about this? You’re not like that” the artist answered.

“Because, you guys seem to have some kind of chemistry” Saray shrugged, turning her head so that she could look at her friend’s face “And I worry, Zule.. I worry that you will spent the rest of your life hiding in that house, locked away from the world and keeping yourself from ever finding new people who could be good to you" the magazine director replied, her soulful eyes locked on Zulema’s green ones after the woman had finally turned to look at her.

“Hiding is good for me Saray, you know how I was before… if I’m hiding, if I’m safely secluded from meeting new people... Then at least it won't hurt me when I realize that I can't love them” Zulema breathed out, wishing that Saray would just stop making this day more difficult.

“But that’s the thing, Zule” Saray started, doing a ‘click’ sound with her mouth to let the brunette know that she wasn’t quite sold on the words that she heard “I know you... You got so much love to give, you’re so considerate... I don’t believe that you’re scared of not being able to love new people” the younger woman shook her head still looking in Zulema’s eyes.

The artist looked away, breaking out of their honest stare.

“I think that you’re afraid you’ll love them too much” Saray nodded, looking at Zulema’s face, while the woman wouldn’t look at her “You can survive without love.. you won’t actually die without it... But you can’t _live_ without it, Zule” Zulema looked at the floor, taking a deep breath.

“I love you, isn’t that enough?” the older woman whispered, finally meeting saray’s eyes again.

“It’s not” Saray whispered back, shaking her head to accentuate her answer “You need more, Zule” both women were turned towards each other by then, Saray reached a hand out to touch her friend's face “My love can only go as far, and you, no matter how much of a tough façade you put on; you miss being loved like you were by him” Zulema looked away again, turning her body to the position it was before, with her back resting against the wooden table.

She bends her body forwards and exhales deeply ‘ _today is definitely my day’_ she thought

“Can you please just take me home?” Zulema breathed out, lifting herself up again “I can’t handle one more blow today, te lo juro” she said, looking at her friend and shaking her head.

“Vale, but you know this isn’t the last I’m going to say about that” Saray warned, pushing her body away from the table and reaching her hand out to Zulema.

“Just do it another day, ok” Zulema agreed, taking Saray’s hand.

The younger woman pulled her in and put one arm around her shoulder as they both started walking towards the door. Finally calling it quits on the long day that the artist had.

* * *

Macarena had arrived home, showered and had just pulled on some cream-colored sweatpants and a white t-shirt.

She went for her heavy backpack that was laying in her bed and started taking out her work materials. After they were all set in bed, she put them away one by one, then carefully disassembled her camera, putting the expensive lens in its box before she let the thing rest in a drawer, and by last she put the camera up in the shelf along with all the others.

Looking at her hand she inspected the memory card that she had removed from the camera, taking a deep breath before she moved towards the dark table where her laptop was stored. She took it and set it between her arm and ribs along with its charger and the memory card adapter.

She moved down to the first floor of her apartment, her naked feet walking through the cold floor. She reached the large living room where the electric fireplace was; the room had a big sofa that went almost all around the space, everything was in cold white and icy colors, with just a few glimpses of warmth around the room. It was very elegant but in general, it was a cold and isolated setting, exactly how Macarena wanted it to be.

The blonde sat down in the large sofa and pulled the center table closer to her, so that she could rest the computer atop it. She opened the thing and the screen immediately alight, she plugged the memory card in and waited a few second while the laptop read the intruding device.

She looked up at the painting that stood cold and proud against the opposite wall to the sofa, like it was her version of a television, the one painting that had cost almost as much as her car because two idiots kept raising their bids, the one that wasn’t supposed to be seen by other people.

The computer opened the file inside the memory card and she clicked on the first photo. The brunette woman filled the screen on her laptop, it was the first photo that she’d taken of the artist, the one where the woman was holding both of her hands together in a shy manner, her expression blank but at the same time; devastated.

The photographer zoomed in on the woman’s face, the dark circles under her eyes were very visible and she wondered how much the woman had slept before the photoshoot.

She carefully roamed her eyes over every detail on the photograph analyzing what needed to be edited, and then zoomed in on the woman’s face again, being drawn to it.

After a moment she leaned back on the couch, taking a deep breath then exhaling it. She once again looked up at the painting.

“I want to know all your secrets... _Zulema_ " she whispered in the empty apartment, the woman’s name sounding like a prayer on her lips.


	4. The photographer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested, the background song for this chapter is 'Angelina' by Night Moves. 
> 
> I will probably change a lot of things from this chapter later, as I'm not very satisfied with how it flowed and I feel like I rushed a little bit, but for now this is it. 
> 
> Let me know if you like it!

“Only one? Get more, I'll make an especial price for you!” The kind owner of Maca’s favorite grocery store offered, after he packed the last item on Maca’s grocery list; one single tomato.

“I only need one, Owen.” Maca smiled, taking the bags that Owen had handed to her, she reached for the money in the back pocket of her jeans. 

“You say that, but tomorrow you’ll be back here for one more tomato and whatever else that you could have gotten today” Mr. Owen replied, frowning his face “Why not make it easier on yourself and just get everything today, kid?” he sounded like Maca’s grandpa sometimes and the blonde often saw him as such.

“And not see your wrinkled face every day? No, thank you.” she smiled while she paid him and fixed the bags in her arm, already turning to leave the store.

She waved at Mr.Owen one last time, with her most sincere smile “See you tomorrow, Owen” she let him know, while she opened the door of the establishment and stepped out.

Mr. Owen waved at Maca and offered the same sincere smile, even though the blonde had already turned away and couldn’t see him anymore “strange girl.” He said it to himself, watching the young woman walk away.

* * *

Maca had been living In Switzerland for three years now; when she was done with university she moved back to Madrid to help her mother after her dad had a heart attack, but she couldn’t really stay. She lived in Madrid for a year then, but it wasn’t her home anymore, in fact, she realized it had never been her home in the first place. And so she moved back to Switzerland, with no family or friends anywhere near her, to live an isolated life in the cold and quiet city.

The blonde knew some people, it wasn’t like she was an outcast or anything of the sort; she was always getting invited to places and events, but she just didn’t see herself as the party girl that she knew those people expected her to be and so she never accepted the empty invitations nor had any interest on being in touch with the people that offered them.

She enjoyed being surrounded by her family and close friends, people who really cared about her and made her feel genuinely happy to be around them, but since those people weren’t within reachable surroundings; she was mostly alone, she didn’t complain about it though, she actually enjoyed it. She enjoyed the easy going routine that she built for herself, and she enjoyed the absolute freedom that she had in her life.

If she wanted to, she could just take off and be gone for an entire month before anyone missed her, and while to some people that looked like a sad existence, to her it felt like living the dream. It was what she wanted when she first decided to study miles and miles away from her whole life. She wanted to be free and do what she liked without anyone minding her. And unlike that need to get away from her family might seem; she didn’t want to live an adventurous life or do anything that her parents would consider to be wrong in any way.

She wanted to get up with the sun and go cycling around the city, or go for a late-night run around her block; maybe take her camera and spent the whole night photographing the city-lights, maybe go out to photograph life and be gone for an entire week, only coming back when she really felt like she captured all that she wanted to.

Macarena just wanted to be by herself and enjoy the peaceful feeling of being all alone, because when she first moved to Switzerland and was alone and so very far from everything that she knew; that was the very first time in her life that she didn’t feel disconnected from the rest of the world.

But even, though she was in love with everything that she was building for herself, she was very aware of the downside of living such a remote life. So, as she walked home with her small bag of groceries she didn’t mind that she would probably have to go back to that same grocery store tomorrow.

She actually needed to have a reason for leaving her apartment every day, she had to keep herself connected to her surroundings and the good people that she didn’t mind having a conversation with, like Mr. Owen, and Jackson the doorman, or even Mrs. Joan, that was always minding other people’s business but could be so very kind; like she was yesterday when she baked an apple pie and brought a piece to Maca, because it was Sunday and she thought that a nice girl like Maca should have someone who brought her baked goods in such quiet days.

Maca needed those people, she needed those quick interactions, like the one she just had with the grocery store owner, because as much as she loved being isolated in her own little world, she knew that she had to keep a close watch on herself. She had to make sure that she didn’t allow _being alone_ to transform into _being lonely,_ and that was a difficult job to keep, since one almost couldn’t exist without the other.

A couple of months after she moved back, she realized that If she bought her groceries for the whole month, if she got a treadmill, and only photographed when she was getting paid to; Then, loneliness and seclusion would be guaranteed, and that had never been her. She was never someone who enjoyed melancholia and she surely didn’t enjoy loneliness. She loved life too much for those kinds of feelings, she enjoyed being alive with such vehemence that most people wouldn’t understand it if she tried to explain.

Like, right then, with the cold morning-air blowing strongly against her body while she only had a grey tanktop and some jeans on her, she could feel a light euphoria for just being there, for getting to feel the cold, for having a quick interaction with Mr. Owen and for getting to live in such a beautiful place, but most of all; for being so completely free...

She reached her building and Jackson buzzed her in and hastily rushed to the gate, planning on helping with her grocery bags “Stop right there, Jackson” she warned with a smile while the young man approached.

“Let me help you with those, they look heavy” Jackson offered. He was a nice young man and he truly enjoyed helping people in any way that he could; even more when it came to Maca, since he developed a crush on her the very first day that she moved in.

“You’re such a liar, these bags look almost empty... And that’s because they are” Maca answered as she continued walking inside the building, going towards the elevator with Jackson walking by her side. He knew that Maca didn’t need his company but didn’t want to step away just yet.

“You’re photographing the city today? It looks like it's going to snow later, it’ll be beautiful to photograph” Jackson prompted, while he pressed the button to call the elevator for the blonde.

“Thanks.... and no, I have a deadline on a job that It’s not even half-way done and if I don’t deliver by tomorrow, this tough magazine-director might just kill me” Maca answered. She had never been late with delivering a photoshoot, but this particular one was proving to be quite difficult.

The doorman looked down at the floor and cleared his throat while they waited “Trouble with editing?” he asked, just before the elevator arrived and he opened the door for her.

“Oh how I wish editing was my biggest problem with this particular job” Maca snickered to herself once she was inside the elevator.

Jackson smiled and nodded his head, even though he had no idea of what the blonde was talking about “Well, I'm sure it’ll turn out great” he replied.

Maca smiled and blinked one eye at him, figuring that she wasn’t required to verbally respond to the kind-but-meaningless words.

The young man smiled and nodded before he let the door close in front of Maca and she pushed the button that corresponded to her floor. When she was alone again, she breathed in deeply, thinking of how much work she had ahead, and how anxious she was about the whole thing.

The elevator stopped at her floor and she pushed the door open, moving towards her apartment and struggling to keep the grocery bags in place while she tried to find her keys, that were somewhere in one of her pockets.

“Every time! Every single time" She said to herself when she wasn’t able to keep the bags straight in her arm and the contents of it scattered all around the floor.

She scrunched and set the bag down, moving to get all of items that had fallen out. After she got them all and found the keys in one of her pockets, she opened the door to the apartment and quickly stepped inside.

The blonde took off her shoes before going straight to the dark-grey and very spacious kitchen. She set everything that she bought by the counter, separating the cans from the vegetables and fruits. She took everything that needed to be washed and set it in the sink to wash them. After that, she started preparing her food…

She had taken her time with baking a nutritious breakfast and leaving everything set for later, so that lunch-time will be a lot easier and faster. She changed back into a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt, both in light colors, before she finally moved back to the place that she had been trying to ignore ever since she woke-up in this cold morning.

She sat by the large sofa, opened the laptop and let out a deep breath when the screen lightened and the brunette’s face appeared on it once again, staring straight at her, just like she had been for the last four days.

Maca had, for the last four days, escaped everything from her routine in order to stay with the stoic artists. She’d been held-up inside the nest that she created by the living room, like nothing else mattered; nothing other than studying the brunette that stood still, inside her laptop screen.

The woman wasn’t even present, yet she managed to change all of Maca’s usual plans; the artist made everything seem less import, less interesting than she was.

She couldn’t understand what happened, but whenever she looked at the woman she felt magnetized to her image. and so, day after day, she watched the light coming from the floor-to-ceiling windows by the living room, go from bright to dark and dark to bright, without even minding to look at the clock or set a schedule for this job.

All that she could do was look at the woman and mess with the light settings and the depths of field on the pictures; truthfully the photoshoot didn’t even need too much editing, unlike most of her other jobs, this was supposed to be a touch-and-go kind of work.

What the magazine wanted for this was a realistic but mysterious photograph of the artist, which should be easy enough to deliver since the pictures she took of the woman had been the most brutally honest images that she ever got from a model, and for the mysterious part she didn’t even had to do anything as the artist was the definition of the word.

But yet, there she was, really behind on delivering. And that was owing to the fact that every time she looked at the brunette, she had this flashback of their one encounter, of the woman’s eyes; deep greens that were so petrified, and at the same time so provoking.

Maca had never felt so intrigued by a model, so caught up in a job. And in all honesty; she had never felt so interested in another human being.

When she first heard that the artist was going to be in an article and there would be a photoshoot, she had been really excited. She hadn’t been lying when she said that she was a fan of Zulema’s work, but she didn’t know what she was going to find when she decided to do that photoshoot, she had no idea on what the artist would even look like or what kind of person she was, but when she saw her, when they locked eyes, her heart skipped a beat and she been transfixed by the brunette.

Maca would never say that she was attracted-at-first-sight to the woman, because that never happened to her before and so she couldn’t really tell, but over these four days she had wrecked her brain trying to find a explanation that better defined her body’s reaction when she met the artist, and she realized that she couldn’t.

She looked at the woman and she wanted to get to know her, she wanted to bear witness her, she wanted to photograph every emotion that Zulema ever had and just own it as if she was entitled to it. Maca wanted to lock Zulema's emotions in an especial drawer, together with everything else that has ever mattered to her.

“You’re making me feel like a stalker, Zulema" Maca complained in the empty apartment, letting out a deep breath and moving closer to the notebook, deciding that she would be done with this job in the next few hours before she drove herself to madness…

And so she did, taking a break to prepare and enjoy her lunch but quickly getting back in front of the screen, and not stopping until she had done every change that she had wanted to make on the photographs.

She fought against the urge to linger whenever she looked at the brunette’s face, and doing that had been more difficult than she thought, but by four o’clock she was done. Work finally completed and everything was perfect and ready to be sent for the magazine.

Maca leaned back on the couch that had become her favorite and best spot in the house, she traveled her hands down her face, and yawned a little. She read the screen one more time, making sure that she had typed the correct email address and without opening the attached file again, she wrote a quick apologize for the amount of time that took her to deliver and sent the email addressed to Saray Vargas. 

Finally riding herself of the job that had consumed her every thought for the last 96 hours. She immediately regretted being done with it, knowing that now she had no plausible explanation for being glued to Zulema’s pictures.

When she heard the little ‘ _woosh'_ sound that let her know the email had been sent, she let out an exasperated groan and slide down in the couch until she was sitting on the floor with her back against the couch and her legs bent at the knee.

She finally felt all the exhaustion, that she had been pushing off ever since she started this, quickly creeping in. making her bones ache, her eyes feel heavy and her senses finally coming back to her.

She managed to push her body up from the floor and moved to the kitchen, filling up a jar of water before going towards the far left of her living room and reaching the floating shelves, where she kept her plants.

After she watered them, she put the jar in the floor beneath the shelves, too lazy to go back in the kitchen; she moved to her left, and turned on the stereo sound systems that was also set atop a floating shelf.

She then closed the blinds on the floor-to-ceiling windows, so that the only light in the apartment was now coming from the electric fireplace that she had turned on. After that, she adjusted the volume on the stereo so that the sound wouldn’t be too loud or to low, and let the slow and calming music fill the space around her. She was finally feeling the edges, that had crept up on her for the last few days, slipping away from her body, allowing her to be her again.

Humming along to the music and letting her body move along with its notes, she moved back to the center of the living room. but instead of going to the couch, like her body desperately wanted to; she looked up at her beloved painting, letting her eyes roam all around it, she moved until she was standing in front of the art. 

She frowned lightly and let her feelings own her completely, coming to accept what she knew she would have to do ever since she parted ways with the enigmatic brunette. Her hands were in her waist and she admired the expensive painting while the apartment was flowing with orange light and the music made everything seem calmer.

“It’s the only way, then" Maca accepted her own thoughts, spending a few more moments standing there and enjoying the peaceful feeling that seemed to surround her now.

When the song started to play from the beginning again, she turned away and moved until she sat down on the floor. Deciding that she would just sleep there, she took a few pillows and settled it down, so that tomorrow she wouldn’t wake up with terrible back pain from sleeping in the rough surface.

She reached for her cellphone that has been lying beside the notebook and turned it on, finally laying on her back and letting her aching bones rest.

When her phone was on, she ignored all the messages that she had gotten and only replied to the missed call from her mother; she called back and let her mom know that she was done with her work, but she was really tired and would call her tomorrow after a good twelve-hours sleep.

Her mother was used to Maca’s ways by now, so she didn’t constantly called like she used to do when Maca had first moved away. As long as Maca called and let her know that she would be caught up with work before she completely disconnected from the outside word, then, everything was fine and she would just wait until the blonde was done with her obligations and called her; after so many years, she finally accepted the fact that her daughter was a free spirit, her beautiful kid was simply happier when she she wasn't tied to anything, anywhere or anyone. 

And just like Encarna accepted that fact about her daughter, Maca accepted the fact that her mother needed to feel close to her, she needed at least a call per-week and she needed to know whenever Maca was 'going-dark', and so the blonde always let her mother know when she started and when she finished a job. She knew that for as much as she enjoyed not having to give explanation for when she disappeared; Encarna's interest in hearing from her, made her feel more connected and kept her grounded to what was really important in her life.

After she ended the brief call with Encarna, she took a deep breath and finally called the number that she had been wanting to call for the last four days. She put the phone to her ear and heard the beeping sound, making her feel all of that previous anxiety creeping back in with every passing second that the line went unanswered.

She looked up at the ceiling, momentarily letting herself getting distracted by the glowing light reflecting from the fireplace; it made the room seem much warmer and cozier than it actually was.

Maca had gotten so distracted by the easy atmosphere that she didn’t realize that the other line had finally picked up the call.

“ _Hello?... Who is this_?” she heard the woman speak and felt her heart skip a beat. She sat up on the floor and forgot all that she had planned to say when she first dialed the number. In moments like this, she was reminded of how much she lacked in her social abilities.

“H _ello?”_ The woman tried again, but Maca still hadn’t figured out what she needed to say so that the woman wouldn’t just disconnect the call on her _“I can hear your music playing, I know you’re there”_ Maca heard and finally decided that even if she didn’t know what words to use, she would just go ahead and say it anyways. It couldn’t be as complicated as her mind momentarily made her think it was.

“It’s Macarena…the photographer” She breathed out and heard nothing but complete silence on the other line. She realized that since she’s the one that called, she should be the one stating her intentions.

“I called because, well.. I know that we don’t know each other that well, or at all, for that matter… but I was really hoping that you would consider going for lunch with me?” The blonde smoothly asked and closed her eyes, slowly laying back down and looking up at the ceiling again, waiting for a reply.

“ _When_?” The brunette on the other side of the line answered and Maca smiled with relief.

“Tomorrow? 1pm? We can meet downtown, I know a nice place” Maca suggested, now smiling and feeling her anxiety slowly slip away, knowing that now, she was one step closer to meeting the woman that haven’t left her mind for the last 90 hours.

“Tomorrow, then.” She heard the woman agree, and to Maca’s surprise; she actually seemed to be excited about it.

“I’ll see you tomorrow” Maca confirmed and heard the woman saying goodbye before they disconnected the call.

Maca set her phone on the couch and turned on the floor until she was facing the painting, letting it calm her like it always did and feeling the beats of music carry her to a much-needed, peaceful sleep.

“Tomorrow, then.” She repeated just as she drifted off.


	5. The Artist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested, the background song for this chapter is 'Every Time The Sun Comes Up' by Sharon Van Etten.
> 
> https://mobile.twitter.com/Notac0olgirl/status/1354976658206437376 different scenario, different hair but this is Zule in this story and you can't change my mind.  
>    
> Try to look past any typos, bc I surely did. 
> 
> Let me know what you think!

Zulema gulped down the water from a glass that she had just filled, and then set it back down on the counter, looking at the clock by the wall in the living-room and seeing that it was only 4 in the morning; She didn’t know what day it was, or how long it's been since she got home from Saray's magazine, or even when was the last time she ate. 

She moved towards the fridge and opened it, examining the contents of it and realizing that she should call the grocery store and order the delivery of her monthly list. but for now she would eat the yogurt that has been there for god knows how long, it didn’t matter, and she wasn’t really hungry, she just knew that she had to eat something before she developed one of her splitting headaches. She got a spoon from one of the drawers and moved away from the open-concept kitchen, passing by the living-room and hallway, before reentering the room that she hadn’t left for a couple of days. All her paintings were carefully aligned and put away in there, the only ones on display were one that she had started a few hours ago and the one that she had finished last night, or last morning; she wasn’t sure.

She moved to the wide window that stood right behind the two paintings, she opened it for the first time in a while and sat by the edge of it, eating her yogurt and watching the city’s night-lights, while all the people lived their own lives inside the apartments that she could see from the privileged view of her penthouse. 

Whenever she could feel some sort of breakdown coming, she would sit by one of the windows in her home and look at the buildings that surrounded the place, and she would imagine what the people who lived there were doing. She would imagine a big family getting ready for dinner, or a couple sitting quietly in their living-room watching a movie while they, ever so lightly, caressed each other. Right now, she couldn’t imagine any of those things. She couldn’t really feel anything that she was supposed to be feeling; she couldn’t feel the cold, she couldn’t feel the tiredness, _that she knew she had to be feeling considering the fact that she hadn’t slept for more than 3 hours total in the last few days,_ she couldn’t feel hunger, she couldn’t feel happiness or sadness, she felt nothing at all. 

She was just there, existing in her comfort zone, looking out the window and barely breathing, afraid of disrupting the sacred quietness that enveloped the city at those hours. It was either late-night or early-morning, she wasn’t sure. it was something between time to get up and time to go down, that definition depends on who was answering, but to her it was all the same; it was just a precise kind of quiet that let her know that a new day was in the arisen and she had spent the last 24 hours either being able to distract herself enough to avoid dealing with anything important, or she had failed at that, and spent her day spiraling out of control. 

She finished her yogurt and lingered a bit longer in her current spot, trying to imagine life as it was before, trying to think about what she would be doing, back when life was normal; she would most likely be asleep, or waking up to make breakfast for everyone. She knew that it would be one of those two things, but she couldn’t imagine it though. It had been happening lately and it made her throat close-up, her eyes fill with tears and a scream torn everything inside of her, while she could do nothing but silently wait for it to pass. When those moments came, it didn’t matter what she was doing, if she had company or not, or how much she wished that she could control it. It would devastate everything in and around her. 

She breathed out, hoping to urge away the escalating need to cry or scream or break things. She closed her eyes and pushed back the tears that were threatening to spill. To her, forgetting her past, forgetting the woman she’d been and the people she’d loved, it was the equivalent of being punched in her stomach multiple times, it truly, physically hurt; she couldn’t breathe and everything ached. All that she could do was wait until the pain dissipated and she could feel the air coming in again. 

_‘You have to let it go before it takes you under’…_

She remembered her friend’s words and she finally moved away from the window, closing it almost completely but leaving a gap, so that she could see when the darkness was replaced by light and the world would come to life again, it was the only way to keep track of her days and nights. If not for the sunlight coming from the window, she would spent three days in that room thinking that it had been just a couple of hours. 

She sat down in front of the painting that she had previously started and she examined it, trying to figure out what it was, or at least what it would eventually be; sometimes she did that, especially when she was sleep deprived. She would start a painting but have no idea on what it was about. She would just let the brush go from one side to another over the white canvas until the result came out. By the end, hours later, and most of the time surprising even herself, she would see that she had created something beautiful without having any idea of how or why. 

After she got one of the many brushes that she kept in a table by her right side, she got a pallet of dark-colors and she started brushing at the unknown subject that she subconsciously decided to create. The sun had not yet risen, so the room was illuminated by two lamps, one that stood by the floating shelf just beside the window, and the other by a similar shelf at the left corner of the room; it created a dim glow around the painting. 

Zulema moved the brush with intensity and purpose, stopping every few seconds to pick up another brush and another set of colors before directing her attention back to the canvas in front of her. She did everything with such reverence and attention; No one would be able to tell that she had no idea of what she intended to paint, not even her. 

She removed the white color of the canvas and gave it life with each stroke of her brush, and it made her feel extremely frustrated and energetic. She loved that she could create like that, but sometimes it made her feel anxious to not know what she was doing, it also made a rush of energy course through her body and lighten everything. 

But she was aware that when she mixed the lack of sleep and extreme tiredness with all of that excessive energy, there could be no different result if not a chaotic episode waiting quietly for its perfect moment to blow… 

She painted for what it felt like minutes, but as the light coming from the gap at the window let her know; she’d been painting for _at_ _least_ 2 hours. She put the brush down, and got up from her seat, so that she could see the painting more clearly. It was a realism painting, she had only gotten the background and outlining by then, but the dark and vivid colors could only be from a realism painting, which she hasn’t done in a while. 

The artist rubbed her eyes, then travelled her hands down her face, trying to fight off the weird mix of exhaustion and bright energy that her body was producing. Before she could sit down and pick up her brush again, she realized that she had watercolors all over her hands, which meant that now she had watercolors all over her face. She took a deep frustrated-breath and realized she had to eat something when she got lightheaded from it.

She moved away from the ‘art-room’ and went for the bathroom that stood in the hallway between the bedrooms of the first floor and the living room. The sunlight that illuminated the restroom let her know that it must be just past 6am by then.

The room was, unlike the rest of her home, very bright and wide; it had a clawfoot tub, there were big green plants all around, a big shower that hung from the ceiling and made the place look very elegant. It was without a doubt the most relaxing place in Zulema’s home, closed followed by the art-room; they were the only places that she allowed natural light to came in. Everything else was beautiful too, but she hardly spent any time in the kitchen or living-room and she _never_ went to the second floor. She made sure to always leave the blinds closed, so the places were only illuminated by low lights; those rooms often felt uninviting and too secluded to be enjoyable, so she sometimes put Christmas lights all around it to make it look prettier and feel more like a home.

Zulema moved until she was standing in front of the sink. She washed her hands and watched as the colors blended before running down the drain. She looked down at her body and noticed that her clothes also had paint on it. Her shirt was torn and she looked like a mess, which was exactly how she felt. 

She pulled the oversized shirt away from her body and let it fall to the floor. She then looked up at the mirror that she had been ignoring before and she gazed at her reflection, looking at her own eyes and getting momentarily trapped in her own gaze, but when she felt the sting of fresh tears, she breathed out and looked away. 

“I’m already under, so deep, that I can’t even see the surface anymore” She whispered, thinking again about Saray’s words. She had wanted to answer exactly that when she heard her friend’s advice, but how could she? When the younger woman loved her so deeply, and for reasons yet unknown to her. Saray loved her like she was the most incredible person that the Gitana had ever met, so she would keep her truths to herself. She wouldn’t give her reason to worry, she couldn’t be a burden to her friend again. Not like she’d been before. 

She looked up at the mirror again, making sure to avoid her eyes. She looked at her face and her chest, and all she could think was that she looked like a shadow of who she once been; her cheekbones were highlighted, as were her collarbones, she had deep-dark circles around her eyes and she looked pale. She disliked everything about what she saw. She had always been a thin woman, but she had never been a sick-looking woman, not before.

She realized that she hadn’t looked like that a couple of months ago; she had looked tired and she hadn’t looked like herself when she decided she would start avoiding mirrors, but she certainly didn’t look like that. She thought that by avoiding her own reflection it would be easier to avoid her ever growing insecurities and it would make her spend last time frowning at her face, what she had failed to realize was that, when someone feels about themselves like she does, it becomes that much easier to stop taking care for their image. So when she didn’t had a daily reminder that she had to look out for herself, then, getting to the point that she was now, was as inevitable as the tears that escaped from her eyes without waiting for permission. 

She opened the faucet again and bent towards it, splashing water on her face to wash away the trails of paint and the trails of pain. 

She looked at her reflection one last time to make sure that the paint was no longer decorating her features. When she saw that everything was clean, she got the old shirt from the floor and took it with her as she moved away from the bathroom. She stopped by the laundry-room and stepped out of her pants, putting away the dirty clothes and getting a clean dark-shirt. 

She went towards the kitchen, pulling on the oversized shirt as she walked; the shirt was a very light fabric that stopped just above her upper thigh and felt like silk caressing her skin. The weather outside was cold but she still kept the AC in low temperatures, which made the whole apartment feel like a freezer. To anyone else the cold would be extremely uncomfortable, and to someone as small as she was, it should be nearly unbearable. But she enjoyed it like this, she enjoyed feeling like she was comfortably laying on snow while had nothing but underwear on; the feeling of being freezing from the inside-out was comprehensible to her, it had a reason and it had a solution, it was simple enough. If she felt so inclined, she would just turn off the AC and dress in warm clothes. She really liked that something could be that simple in her life. 

Her naked feet crossed the floor until she was in the kitchen again, going for the cabinets and looking inside, trying to find something that would be easy and fast to make. The only thing that she could find was some bread, which she got it and set it by the counter. She opened one of the drawers that were below that counter and got out a block of post-its and a pen. 

“Make..the goddamn..grocery..list” she said it while she wrote on the neon paper “and.don’t..forget..to..call..the..grocery..guy!!!” she finished, underlining the words and putting emphasis with the exclamation points. 

She moved to the fridge and stuck the post-it outside of it, then she opened the thing and took out the only non-sweet edible that she had in there and brought it to the counter, taking the bread out of the plastic protection and putting mayo on each side before devouring it like she hadn’t eaten in the days, _which was partially true._

She ate two more slices and felt that she had enough on her to go for the next eighteen hours but decided that she needed some coffee just the same. She put everything in its place before she started brewing the dark liquid-energy, the smell of it coursing through the whole kitchen and making everything feel warmer and homier.

She got her mug and filled it with the strong beverage and soon starting walking through the apartment again. The only light that illuminated the place was the flickering Christmas lights, the ones that she’d been meaning to take it down for months now. She got to her art-room again and sat by the chair in front of the painting, just like she’d done before, just like she’d been doing for the last several hours. She put so much detail in her realism paintings that sometimes they looked like a mirror, a perfect reflection of whatever it was that she decided to create, like they were a perfect reflection of life. But they were better, because in the paintings she could mask all the ugliness beneath the surfaces; she could hide all of the sins, she could put it away from roaming eyes and she could make it invisible even to the most interested glares. Unlike in life, she could make the pain stay hidden and ignored since she was the one creating the scenarios. 

The sun was coming up, through the not-so-small gap on the window, that had been pushed opened by the restless cold air. The room was now illuminated by the yellow glow, making everything clear and more real around the crumbling artist. She looked at the opened window and watched the yellow-orange light growing with each minute that passed. She glared around the room that had paint, brushes, and canvases all around, and she couldn’t help but think that she wished her life was different, better. 

Right then, with a brush in her hand, hours spent in front of a canvas, an almost completed painting, _that she still had no idea on what it was about,_ she realised something; she knew for a fact that she would trade all of her creativity, would never touch or look at a canvas again, that she would abdicate anything that even resembled to art, if she could just wake up years ago, in her bed, with her family, and be told that it was all just a really long and devastating nightmare. She would gladly give up everything about who she was right then, if she could just be happy, or at the very least be satisfied with her life. 

Before she could stop herself, she heard the loud noise of a heavy can colliding against the wall. She watched the yellow paint obey to the laws of gravity and fall to the floor, splashing everywhere and ruining a few canvases on the way. Zulema didn’t stop it though, she reached for the large brush recipient and made fly across the room as well. She looked around and she wanted to scream, she wanted to tear everything apart, she wanted to break something or someone, she wanted to kick and punch and bite and roar, let it out the ranging war inside of her brain; if only there was someone other than herself to blame. 

“Fuck!” she half cursed; half cried. Her hands at her hair and her face twisted in an expression that was something between needing to cry and being angry at that need. She didn’t have to wait long to find out which feeling was stronger when a sob broke free from her and she bowed her body forward while it shook with desolation. She went down until she was sitting in the now yellow-painted-plastic that covered the floor of the entire room. Her throat felt clogged and her chest constricted, she had a scream tearing inside of her, something that would surely sound like the dying howl of a deer after being hit by a car in a dark road if she ever let it out. She leaned back until she was lying on the floor, her head facing the window and her feet towards the door, the bright light hitting her face and the warmth allowing her to calm herself. 

She cried like she lived her days; alone and quietly. She cried until her tears dried and her emotions went back to being blank, leaving her motionless and invisible in the room, just as unreal as all the images that she created; she stayed that way for hours, half-way present and half-way nowhere to be found, floating, in between feeling too much and feeling nothing, while lying in the spilled paint and plastic.

* * *

If not for the low background music, which she hadn’t even realized that was still on, and the avid moving of a brush, the room was completely still; the atmosphere was the same as that of a church after Sunday service, silenced and almost sacred. 

The artist wasn’t asleep, but she woke up when her phone rang. She had been subconsciously brushing away at the screen waiting for the truth to come out. She snapped out of her ruthless creation and glared towards the origin of the unwelcome noise, her lashes wet with tears that were still rising without her permission.

She looked at the phone and took a moment deciding if she should answer the call or let it go to voicemail, but when the thing wouldn’t stop ringing, she realized that she should get it. 

“Hello?” her low voice sounded through the room, breaking the silence. She didn’t hear a reply and for a second she thought it had been a mistaken call, but when she heard the music blasting at the other side of the line she tried again “Hello?.. Are you there?” she asked. 

Just as she was about to disconnect the call, she heard an answer from the other side of the line. 

“ _You sound tired, qué pasa_?” her friend asked, and she felt immediate relief at just hearing the young woman’s voice. 

“Nothing, I’m just painting... almost done with it” she answered with the same tired voice of before. She put the phone on speaker and set it in the table by her side, so that she could continue using her hands while she spoke with the other woman. 

“ _I don’t know why you even try”_ Saray answered and she managed to smile at that “ _Qué pasa_?” 

“It was just a moment really, everything’s back to normal now” she breathed out, not completely lying, but not telling the truth either. 

“ _then why do you sound like you did that night a couple of months ago?”_ Zulema pouted her lips and looked away from the painting, looking at the phone like she would be able to see her friend at the other side. 

“ _Zule?”_ she heard her friend’s voice again. The worry and affection evident in Saray’s tone. 

“I don’t know if I ca-” Zulema started but had to stop when her throat closed up again and her feelings threatened to choke her “I don’t know for how long I can continue living like this” she whispered. 

“ _Zule_..” she heard the concern in her friend's voice and realized how her words probably had a different meaning when the other woman heard them. 

“I don’t mean _that_ , I just” she looked down at her hands, that were once again dirty with multiple colors, and breathed out “I don’t know, ok? I’m caught in this roller-coaster where I feel numb when I hit the highs and I feel completely devastated when I hit the lows… but I don’t mean _that_ ” she explained and hoped that the younger woman believed her. 

“ _I’m coming over there, ok”_ She heard the shuffling at the other side of the line and so she hastily replied before her friend moved any further. 

“No, Saray” Zulema answered in her demanding but calm voice, shaking her head in the empty room “I told you, I’m almost done painting and after I’m done; I’m going to sleep for the next fifteen hours or so” she exaggerated, knowing full well that even in her best nights she couldn’t sleep more than four hours, five if she had a _really good_ night.

“I can’t have you driving across town every time I have a moment” She explained and heard the other woman’s frustrated breathing. 

“ _So what? I can’t be there for you if I want to?”_ the Gitana asked and she bit the inside of her cheeks, deciding to turn back to her painting. 

“You can.. but it can’t always be about this, Saray.” She shook her head while she looked at the image in front of her and tried to figure out what was lacking on it. “You deserve a better friendship than the one I offer you” Zulema honestly said. 

“ _Zule, you’re not a friendship to me… you’re my fucking family”_ She smiled at hearing those words and she looked at the phone again 

“You’re my family too” She stated, wishing that she could hug the younger woman, or at the very least look her in the eyes when she said that. 

“ _T_ _hen stop acting like you’re some kind of a job to me”_ She had a reply in the tip of her tongue for that, but she knew that she should spare her friend and herself from the mindless depreciation, so she stayed in silence and continued her work on the screen. 

“ _Remember when we first met_?” Saray asked after they were in silence for a few seconds “ _I had no one and I had nothing but anger in me.. you could’ve walked away. I wouldn’t care, you would’ve been just one other faceless person that crossed paths with me and decided to stay away from my rage...”_ Saray’s voice echoed through the room.

 _“But you didn’t, you stood by me and you never made me feel like a burden”_ Zulema’s eyes filled with tears again, but they weren’t the same as before, this time they were happy tears from proud feelings. 

“but you shouldn-” Zulema started but didn’t got to finish. 

“ _Tia, I will smack you through the phone if you say I shouldn’t feel like I owe you something_ ” they both snickered and Zulema nodded even though Saray couldn’t see it. 

“ _I do.. but that’s not why I want to be there for you. I want to be there because I love you and that’s what you do when you love someone…”_ Zulema smiled and wondered how she ever got so lucky to find someone like Saray. 

_“Its all just a big trade, Zule. I owe you things, you owe me things, and we won’t ever ask the other to pay off their debt.. we’ll just be glad to be tied to one another, like a loan shark and a gambler are”_

_“_ I don’t know where you get those metaphors, but I hope to god that you don’t see our relationship like that of a gambler and a loan shark.” Zulema teased and Saray laughed. 

_“Don’t ruin it, Zulema_ ” She heard the younger woman’s warning and smiled; it was so strange how the woman could make her feel better without any effort needed... _Well, at least for most of the time._

They were silent for a moment and Zulema turned back to the picture that she’d been painting, the low music being the only sound in the room for a few minutes.

“ _What happened, Zule?”_ Saray’s whispered question broke the peaceful atmosphere. Zulema took a deep breath and wondered how she could ever explain things when not even herself understood. 

“I don’t know, Saray” She shrugged, looking towards the window and watching the glimpses' of light coming through.

“I was painting, had been for a while.. The sun was rising, everything looked clearer and I just- _I just felt so angry”_ the artist whispered, her voice full of emotion “everything felt so pointless, so empty... Like nothing mattered... I jus- well, this isn't living you know? It's just.. _Existing_ ; for no particular reason” her eyes stung with tears, but she quickly pushed them back in. She was tired of crying. 

“ _Zule, you’re not going to like hearing this, but.. Nothing will ever change if you don’t decide to change them, if you want to start living again; it’s up to you”_ she heard the brunette's words and breathed out.

She continued coloring the canvas, raising her eyebrows when she realized that the result was clearer than it’d been before and she could actually understand what she’d been creating for hours now.

“ _I mean when was the last time that you had a conversation with someone other than me? The last time you stepped out of that isolated penthouse? You've been living there for years and I bet that you don’t know one single person in that building, or in the entire condo for that matter”_ Saray pushed. Zulema knew that her friend was right but she also knew that she wouldn’t do anything about it. She simply didn’t have the courage to get out there again, and most of all; she didn’t think it was fair that she had the chance to rebuild her life and let go of all the guilt. 

“Mira, you asked what happened and I told you what happened, I’m not looking for an explanation to why I feel the way I feel, and I'm not looking for a way out... I had a moment, it happened, its done... Now I'm back at coloring something” Zulema explained, already feeling tired with that conversation. 

“ _now you’re back at painting and then you’ll go to sleep... and by the time you wake up you’ll have another one of those moments”_ Saray argued _“and another, then probably one more, before you decide to call it a day again... You deserve better Zulema”_ Zulema was holding up her brush, letting it rest against her lips and frowning while trying to figure out how to make the painting look more alive. 

“You need to worry less about my life, Saray” she answered nonchalantly, stretching to get a smaller brush for the white details that she realized she had to do, and ignoring the uneasy feeling that she got from hearing her friend’s concerns “Maybe I deserve better, maybe I don’t.. Anyway, we don’t always get what we deserve, or what we want... And some people are so unlucky, that they get what they want just so they can _really_ understand how miserable life gets after they lose whatever glimpse of happiness that they had” she shrugged and moved the pencil brush making small white dots on the painting. 

“ _You’re wrong, you’re just scared that if you put yourself out there.. you just might find happiness again”_ Zulema frowned at the words and shook her head, looking at the screen of her phone again as if the younger woman would be able to see her through it. 

“No, I’m scared that I won’t..I’m scared that If I get out there I’ll lose the small bit of control that I fought so hard to get back, I’m scared that after I break, you’ll stop your whole life again to help me pick up the shattered pieces..” she breathed out in her husky voice, letting the frustration momentarily slip from her, but quickly feeling it be replaced by the usual sorrow and exhaustion. 

“Joder, Saray; I don’t want to wake up every goddamn night spiraling out of control like I did.. And most of all, I don’t want to see you spending your nights awake with me trying to make things seem less breakable.. as much as you tried to hide it, I could see that I was pulling you down to the same pit that I was... I can't risk getting out in the world because I can't risk losing myself even further” She put down the brush she’d been holding and traveled her hands down her face. 

“ _Zule… Are you sure I can’t come over”_ Saray’s voice sounded through the speaker and she shook her head before she verbally answered. 

“No, I want you to go watch a movie with your beautiful fiancé, I don’t know.. just go do what young people do and stop worrying about me for a couple of days” 

“ _its cute that you think I’m young…and that you believe that I could ever stop worrying about you, especially when you’re saying things like that and sounding like you're one step from fading away_ ” Saray commented and she could hear the shuffling of pans in the other side of the line.

“ _promise me that you’re okay?”_ she heard and closed her eyes before nodding.

“I’m okay” she breathed out.

The call was quiet for a couple of seconds and she figured that the other woman was deciding if she believed the answer that she heard or if she didn’t, and would come over regardless of Zulema’s resistance.

“if I can’t come over, then I’ll stay in the call with you, until you finis- what are you painting again?” her friend asked and she smiled, glad that the younger woman had believed her. She looked at the painting, running her eyes all over it and trying to think of a definition for it “It’s an abstract” she shrugged, not knowing what else to say. 

“ _didn’t you say you have been painting for a while? How long painting something abstract could possibly take?”_ Zulema smiled at that and rolled her eyes. Her friend was an avid supporter of her work, but the woman knew basically nothing about art. 

“It takes a while.. especially when it’s me and I’m constantly doubting the approach I take and then starting from zero again” She explained while she did light spots inside two round globes “it’s honestly sad that you live with one of the most beautiful women in Switzerland and yet you chose to spent your time on a call with me while I do whatever it is that my brain demands” 

“ _Tia, por favor! I love hearing about your abstract thingys”_ They both snickered at Saray’s definition of Zulema’s art “ _besides, Rizos is out on a date”_ Zulema frowned and momentarily looked at the phone again 

“Didn’t know you were that kind of couple” Zulema teased and Saray laughed “What is all that noise?” she questioned.

“ _well we are a very progressive couple”_ Saray joked and Zulema smiled, knowing that her friend was way too in love with her fiancé to ever be able of sharing her with anyone else.

“ _She had a thing.. will be gone till later, probably… and its popcorn”_ the younger woman answered to Zulema’s wonderings. 

“Joder, I haven’t called the grocery store!” She raised her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes, wondering what time it was and if the place would still be opened by the time that she finished “will you remind me to do it before we end this call?” 

“ _O_ _f course, wouldn’t miss the opportunity of reminding you to eat_ ” Zulema smiled and nodded at that.

“When Rizos gets back tell her I sent a hug... and tell her that I kept you very entertained with one of my crazy projects while she was gone”

“ _Vale, I’ll let her know_ ” Saray agreed and the smile on her face was evident in her voice; Zulema knew that Saray loved that she and Rizos cared for each other now, since it hadn’t been that way from the start. 

Zulema kept brushing, they were silent for a few minutes before Saray interrupted the quiet ambience once again.

“ _Pero Tia, por favor. Cambia esa canción antes que yo empece a pensar en todo que lo fue mal in mi vida_ ” Zulema laughed but continued painting.

“Qué dices? This is one of the most peaceful songs that I know” She sang along with the lyrics to make her point. 

“ _I really have to make a playlist for you, then”_ Saray complained and Zulema softly laughed before she put the brush down in the table and got up from her seat, knees loudly popping and back aching when she did. 

“ _Jesus! Was that your bones popping that I just heard?”_ Saray laughed and so did she. 

“Calla! I’m not in my thirties anymore, I’m allowed” She pressed the button in the little music player and the melody stopped. 

The cold wind blew strong and opened the window further, making the whole room bathe in sunlight. It illuminated the mess that the artist had made earlier. her naked feet stepped on yellow paint once again, but she didn’t mind, she would clean that up later, the rest of her was already covered in the bright color anyway. 

“better?” she asked while she sat back down in the not-so-comfortable chair.

 _“Yeah, thanks_ ” her friend replied and she nodded, settling back into work. 

The room was filled only by the sounds of her struggling with the brushes and color pallets, in between painting away at the once white screen. 

“ _Hey, Zule..”_ She heard Saray’s voice through the speaker. 

“hum?” She answered but didn’t look away from her work, too concentrated to fully comprehend anything other than the piece in front of her. 

“ _I know I push you a lot, that’s just because I care…but I think you’re the most resilient person I know, and I’m proud of how far you already came.. you know that, right?”_ Zulema smiled and nodded; no one could make her feel as import as Saray did, and with only a few words. 

“I know” she reassured her friend. 

They stayed in silence for the rest of the call, the only thing that could be heard was Zulema’s restless creative process and Saray’s incessant chewing of the endless amount of popcorn that she had made. 

After a couple of hours more Zulema said goodbye to Saray, but not before reassuring the woman that she was really done and would really go to sleep as soon as she received the groceries that the younger woman had reminded her to order.

After the delivery guy had left the groceries by the kitchen and collected the money and tip that she had left atop of the counter, she came out of the art-room and unpacked everything before putting it away in their correct places of storage.

She opened a bottle of the wine that she had bought and filled up a glass which she took with her to the bathroom, sipping from it while she poured the bath-salts in the tub. She took a quick shower to remove the yellow color out of her hair and body, then she got inside the tub and soaked in the comfortable warmth of it. She stayed there until it started to get too cold, then she dried the droplets of scented-water from her body and wrapped herself around a warm robe.

She adjusted the temperature of all the ACs around the apartment, so that it wouldn’t feel like she was living in North-pole, and she closed all of the windows around the place. She then unplugged the Christmas lights of the living room, which made the surroundings look like it was the middle of the night even though the sun was still setting outside, and finally she moved away to her bedroom. 

She finally got to her resting cave and let her robe fall to the floor, getting a pair of fluffy pants and shirt from her large walk-in closet and pulling it on. 

She crawled back to the room and went straight to the foot of the bed, pulling up the covers so that she could get beneath it and crawl up until she was properly lying in the comfortable heavenly-like-mattress, filled with pillows around her and the light smell of lavender that just made her feel like she was lying on top of happiness. 

Before she could sleep she kept seeing, behind her closed eyelids, the painting that she had spent hours doing, and she could feel the same confusion that she felt once she realized what the final result was. She could see it clear as day the unforgettable, challenging stare and soft blonde hair.

 _‘Don’t say no so quickly, you might change your mind’_ the photographer’s words echoed through her head and she tried to shake it off by abruptly turning to the side and hugging one of her fluffy pillows against her face. 

“Get out of my head” she growled and turned to lying on her back, her eyes closed and her exhausted body already starting to disconnect from its surrounding.

“I don’t want you there” she whispered into the darkness, her body quickly taking the opportunity of resting before it would slip away again.

‘ _you might change your mind’_ Was the last thing she heard, and the hazel eyes were the last thing that her brain summoned before it dissipated into oblivion. 


	6. Connections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested, the background song for this chapter is 'Dance and Angela (Trip hop version)' by Jean-Phi Goncalves.

Macarena was quietly sipping from her mug of hot cocoa and looking out the window, watching as life happened in the downtown streets, and waiting patiently for her ‘date’ to arrive.

The blonde smiled as a young boy passed by holding hands with a older woman, that Maca presumed to be his mom, and waved at her, showing her a set of white milky teeth

“Hi” she whispered and waved back when the boy was about to get out of her sight but was still looking back and smiling at her. She looked down at her table once she was no longer entertained by the child, and against her better judgment, she checked her watch again.

It was past the time that they had agreed, twenty-five minutes later to be exact, and Macarena’s nerves just kept acting up. The blonde hated to be left waiting for anything, she was the kind of person who was always on time, not early, not late, just on time. and as such, she always expected people to show her the same courtesy.

She was about to pick up her phone to dial the woman’s number and make sure that she hadn’t been in a accident or anything of the sorts, when she looked up and spotted the brunette entering through the door and making her way to the center of the establishment.

Maca folded her hands beneath her chin and watched as the other woman looked around trying to find her. When brown eyes finally landed on hazel ones, Maca finally waved at the woman. The brunette waved back and offered a big smile as she started to make her way towards the blonde.

“Hi!” the curly-haired woman excitedly said once she reached the table.

Maca slightly smiled and motioned with her hand as to let the woman know she should take a seat.

“you’re quite late” Maca stated after Stephania had taken her seat and settled her purse against the arm of the wooden chair.

“So? I look flawless don’t I? And that takes time” Rizos answered, smiling and winking at the blonde sitting across from her.

“You do look great, but that’s not a reason for disrespecting my time. If we settle a time for something I expect people to show me the same courtesy I show them, and not leave me waiting for a good half hour” Macarena replied in a sweet tone and a condescending smile on her face.

Rizos bit her lower lip. Still smiling, she looked around the place and raised her hand to get the attention of the waitress who quickly started making her way to their table.

“Calm down princess,” Rizos answered just as the waitress reached their table “I’ll have a frappuccino and a blueberry muffin aaand I don’t know.. maybe three of those small chocolate cookies?” Rizos thought for a moment before settling with her choice “Yes, three of those."

the waitress nodded and smiled before leaving them alone again.

“it’s a twenty-something minutes of lateness... not like I left you waiting for hours in a place full of frat boys” Rizos raised her eyebrows and gave one of her teasing smirks, turning her attention back to Maca.

Macarena snickered and shook her head “Oh, holding a grudge, are we?”

“No. Not a grudge” Rizos shook her head “I heard that holding grudges makes your skin look bad.. but not many people have made a fool out of me, not even pretty princesses like you. So I admit it, I do have a sour spot for you.” She shrugged her shoulders in a teasing manner.

“I still can’t understand why you were so upset by that” Maca smiled and Rizos relaxed in her chair, now that the atmosphere around them was lighter “You invited me to a frat party, did you honestly expected me to go to that?... I mean if I had missed a date or even just a hang out together, sure, be upset about that. But a frat party? You have to admit that It wasn't your best effort”

“Well I had run out of things to invite you to, so frat party it was. You were a difficult one to figure out, Maca.” She looked away from the blonde and towards the waitress that was returning with her order.

She thanked the woman as she took the drink and sweet snacks.

“That’s not true” Maca calmly, shaking her head in denial “You never invited me to just go out with you, or just a walk around the campus really. You seemed to go out of your way to find this most elaborate events so that you could invite me to it, when all you needed to do was invite me to eat some blueberry muffin down by the off-campus café" Maca explained while she watched Rizos take a big bite out of the sweet dessert.

“I never understood why you tried so hard.. you were the coolest person in our class, it’s not like you were having difficulty making friends”

“Humm" Rizos nodded to let Macarena know that she would answer as soon as she finished chewing on her delicious food. Maca snickered at the way that the other woman was attacking that muffin as if she hadn’t eaten in days.

“Well..” Rizos started but took a second to take a sip from her drink “You were too closed off, it was interesting. I wanted to know more about you”

“People do love a mystery, don’t they?” Maca grinned.

“Yeah... well, up until a certain point.” Rizos said, in between bites “Mysterious people are only interesting if they allow you to unravel them.. otherwise, it’s just annoying and then it becomes a one way relationship where one person is doing their best and the other is too busy hiding” she reasoned, more to herself than to Maca.

“But enough of that... why are we here? Because as nice as that would be, I know you didn’t call to just catchup and talk about our Uni times… What do you need?” Rizos questioned.

“I don’t understand why people are always trying to end the small talk with such hurry, I was finding it delightful to sit here and talk with you as if we weren’t both aware that there was a ulterior motive for this meeting” Maca breathed out.

Rizos continued to eat her blueberry dessert with a amused look on her face, one that said _Cut the bullshit Maca,_ while she waited for the girl to answer her.

“You know how you meet someone and that person just stays with you, even after they left? And then you can’t stop thinking about them? …because you’re so damn curious and you just want, or need, to know more”

“Yeah?” Rizos mildly agreed, still not sure about what Maca’s point was.

But then, something clicked. Rizos furrowed her eyebrows for a moment, and roughly swallowed her food as a look of enlightenment and amusement shown across her face “You mean Zulema??” She asked and couldn’t help the smile on her face “oh this is so good” she snickered.

Maca watched Rizos with an unreadable expression on her face. She sipped from her mug and then reached for Rizos small plate of cookies and took one, she took a bite and chewed on the chocolate delicacy before addressing Rizos again “ Yes, Zulema.. and I need your help with it”

“I can’t help you, Maca" Rizos shook her head “The best I can do for you, its tell you to forget about it”

“You _can_ help me, and.. I can’t forget about it” Maca shrugged and finished the cookie that she was holding, watching Rizos through wide eyes, full of expectation.

“What do you want with her?” Rizos questioned, slightly furrowing her eyebrow.

Macarena shrugged, she didn’t have an answer for Rizos question, at least not one she would be comfortable admitting to others, or even to herself, just yet.

Rizos snickered and shook her head at the blonde “And you had me thinking you were straight all those years in Uni"

“I can’t be held responsible for the presumptions you made about me” Maca answered in a way that was neither a confirmation or a denial of Rizos comment “Look, I’m not sure what I want.. but regardless, I know I want _something_ and she seems to have it” Maca tried to explain while she reached for another one of Rizos cookies.

“Zulema’s straight, Maca.” Rizos slapped Maca's hand away before the woman could get another cookie from her plate. Maca pouted as Rizos raised one eyebrow and took a bite from the cookie Maca had tried to take it.

“Good, right?” Maca asked referring to the sweet dessert.

Rizos took another bite and nodded, she looked around and when she spotted the waitress she pointed and her plate and then made a two with her fingers, the woman offered a thumbs-up as confirmation that she understood the request and then moved away to get the girl’s order.

“I think it’s the best I’ve ever had” Rizos answered after she swallowed the last piece. Maca watched her with a slight smirk on her face and Rizos returned the glare with the same intensity.

“I just want her address, I don’t plan on asking for her hand in marriage so I really couldn’t care less about her sexuality” Maca answered, not breaking eye-contact with the curly-haired beauty.

Rizos breathed out and shook her head. She thanked the waitress when she returned with another plate of cookies and pushed the plate towards Macarena, who smiled at her and quickly grabbed one and took a big bite.

“Listen, Zulema’s a difficult person.. whatever you are looking for, you should look elsewhere because from her you’ll only get heartbreak” Rizos breathed out.

“I thought you were friends?” Macarena half wondered; half questioned.

“We are.. well, by default” Rizos sipped from her drink “She's Saray's family, and I’m in love with Saray..” Rizos shrugged and Maca intently observed, waiting to hear more.

“Don’t get me wrong, we are Friends, _I like her_.. She’s actually a great person, and she deeply loves Saray. But just because I’m friends with someone and I think that they’re fundamentally good, doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t warn other people about them. If I think they’re troubled, _if I think they’re first class heartbreakers_ , I should say it.” Rizos reasoned and Maca continued to watch her.

“So… Zulema is troubled, if you get too close; She’ll break your heart” Rizos warned.

“Jesus..” Maca lightly laughed “Consider me properly warned...de verdad Rizos.. I just want her address.” Maca furrowed her eyebrows and nodded with her head, to make her words sound more convincing.

“You’re not listening to me. I can’t be involved in this! Saray’s is crazy protective when it comes to Zulema, if I give you her address and you give Zulema any sort of boo-hoos… She _will_ kill you, and I do really mean that” Rizos shook her head at the blonde.

“Joder!.. Give me the damn address and I’ll get you in that event that Robin’s promoting. How about that?” Maca tried, already tired of pleading for something that shouldn’t be that big of a deal.

Rizos furrowed her eyebrows and leaned back on the chair, the blonde had peaked her interest and it showed. “You were invited to that?”

“I met Robin a few years ago, she likes me.” Maca shrugged “Should we make this trade?.. You know that everybody who is anybody are going to be at that event. And I know for a fact that you didn’t get an invitation.”

Rizos scoffed and squinted her eyes at the blonde “You Know, it’s very weird how interested you are about someone you met once”

“ _I do know_... Do we have a deal?” Maca pushed again.

Rizos looked around the place, wishing they were in some place where she could smoke. She looked at the blonde and smirked, thinking of how ridiculous the whole conversation seemed for two grown adults. She rolled her eyes before answering Maca “Sure... you get me an invitation and I’ll give you the address” she breathed out, “but for god’s sake, _please_ , don't be some creepy stalker” Rizos half said it to maca, and half hoped for her own sake, knowing that if anything went wrong, Saray would not easily forgive her.

Macarena slightly nodded once and reached for her mug, hoping it would cover her uncontainable smile. She took a sip from her drink and tried to not look over excited about the small victory; she realized she was failing at that when Rizos shook her head and softly laughed at the obvious contentment that Maca was experiencing.

“Don’t be so excited, you still have to get me an invitation… and I bet my money that Zulema will not be thrilled to get a surprise visit from a total stranger.” Rizos warned in an amused tone, knowing how much Zulema disliked surprises, in any and all forms. 

Maca finally regained control over her smile muscles and so she finally put her mug down. She cleared her throat before slightly turning to the side to access her purse, she reached inside and took out a silver-colored envelope. Once it was out, she turned back to facing Rizos and she waved the Silver ticket, raising her eyebrows and smirking at the brunette in front of her.

Rizos softly laughed and shook her head, in amusement and disbelieve. She watched as the blonde slide the shiny paper across the wooden table with a challenging smirk on her face.

“You had this all figured out, then?” Rizos laughed as she inspected the invitation and saw her name written in shiny letters.

“I always have everything figured out” Maca blinks one eye at Rizos and the woman rolled her eyes in return.

“Yeah? What about showing up at a strangers house after you met her once, like a stalker would. You have that figured out too?” Rizos teased, knowing that the blonde was in for a treat if she thought that Zulema was ever going to do what was expected of her, or ever choose to go in the more obvious direction when it came to her reactions “And I hope that your answer is N _o_ ” she added.

“ _No_ , I don’t.” Maca smiled “That’s why it seems so appealing to me.. I have no idea on what she’ll think or what she’ll do.. but I’m hoping that the end result will go accordingly to my expectations” Maca shrugged, getting another cookie and devouring just like she did before.

“I can tell you that _estas jodida_ from the get-go if you have any expectations at all about Zulema” Rizos smiled back, but got a more serious tone for her next words “And in all honesty, Maca, this is a bad idea and you might end up fucked over.. whatever you’re looking for, there’s safer Paths to choose.. healthier paths" Rizos didn’t Know why she cared so much, she just knew that she did.

But it wasn’t about Maca that she was worried, she wasn’t _really_ trying to convince the blonde to not go any further; she was just trying to make sure that the woman understood what she was _choosing_ to walk-in to. Because, in all honesty, she also, sometimes, saw Zulema as a breakable person, who’d been through enough and just didn’t need a perky blonde to invade her life, only to leave when she realizes that the woman had a lot of demons to fight.

Macarena reached for Rizos hands and held them against her own when she saw the engines turning behind the woman’s eyes “Listen, I have no intention of hurting her in any way.. You’ll give me the address and when I get over there I’ll be mindful of what she wants.. if she wants me to go and never come back, I’ll respect that" she reassured “But if she allows me to stay.. I don’t have an ounce of bad intentions towards her”

“I’m always giving Saray a hard time about how protective she is when it comes to Zulema.. but I guess I’m the same.” Rizos said, more to herself than to Maca “Zulema has a way that makes you want to protect her, which is funny because she’s really not the kind of woman who needs anyone to protect her.” Rizos offered a halfhearted smile “It’s just.. there’s a softness in her eyes, that you can only see in rare moments, and only if you’re _really seeing her_ ; it makes you want to keep her safe and happy, away from anything that could hurt her.”

“So you are friends with her after all” Maca smiled and so did Rizos.

“Yeah.. I’m not sure of how or when it happened, but, she’s not only Saray’s family.. she’s mine, too” Rizos looked down to the table where Maca was still holding her hands.

“Hey..” Maca softly called and Rizos looked up at her again, meeting Maca’s eyes in a vulnerable stare “Will you give me that address now? I’m sorta running out of ways to tell you that you don’t need to worry” maca teased.

After a few more seconds looking at the blonde’s eyes, Rizos finally nodded, realizing she couldn’t find any ill meaning inside the woman’s gaze and that would be as much reassurance as she would get in this situation.

“Alright” She nodded once and reached for her phone, where she quickly tipped in the address and sent it as a text message to Macarena. “ _Don’t_ make me regret this” she half pleaded, half warned.

Macarena made sure to hold in the smirk that wanted to make itself visible on her face when she saw the text that held the information she wanted the most. She nodded and then put the phone down again.

“There. It’s done.” Maca whispered and leaned back on her chair again.

“It is” Rizos stated, neither excited or apprehensive about it.

“Yeah... so.. tell me, how did you end up married to such a nice catch?” Maca teases and they both softly laughed, thankfully letting go of the heavy atmosphere that had been lurking around them.

“Well.. _of course you didn’t get the memo_.. but I am pretty irresistible.. And Saray put some kind of spell on me” Rizos jokes and Maca smiled “We met at a event and it was love at first sight. Just took me a while to realize it” she chuckled “But thankfully, stupidity doesn’t last forever and I saw how special what we have truly is. So, we got married and I couldn’t be happier, life couldn’t be more exciting” Rizos gleamed, just as she always did whenever she talked about that part of her life.

“I always knew you would end up in the most amazing relationship and have the most fulfilling life" Maca nodded, a smile on her face at seeing the happiness that was visible across Rizos face.

“Because you always have everything figured out” Rizos rolled her eyes.

“Because you were never afraid” Maca corrected “Sometimes it takes a while.. but life always finds a way to reward those who are fearless” she shrugged.

Rizos smiled and nodded, they were silent for a while.

“So, how has life rewarded you?” Rizos wondered.

“In a lot of ways” Maca smiled.

Rizos smiled back and shook her head, knowing that the woman wasn’t going to give her any details and the vague answer was as far as she would get with the blonde.

They stayed there for a while longer and they talked a bit more, catching up with each other’s life and only later saying goodbye, promising to keep in touch this time and Maca, with her eyes, promised that whatever she intended to get from Zulema, whatever came next, wouldn’t hurt anyone involved.

A promise that, she didn’t yet know, was destined to be broken.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope that this wasn't as bad as I think it was. 🤣  
> Anways, next chapter Zurena will meet again (yay) I'll try to do a better job with that.😅🤣 In the meantime, leave a comment to let me know how you're liking this so far.🥰


	7. An Offer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested, the background song for this chapter is 'Switzerland' by DAUGHTER. 
> 
> It's been a while since I updated this, I apologize for that, but please let me know if you're still interested to see this story through. 
> 
> I apologize also for the length of this chapter, it's 8k+ long. I hope you won't get bored with it!
> 
> I hope you enjoy this, and make sure to leave me a comment if you do! <3

Macarena had been sitting inside of her car for almost an hour now, she kept meaning to get out, to ring the bell and do what she went there to do. But every time she reached to open the door of the car, she felt a coldness run through her body, rending her completely frozen. She couldn’t help but think that perhaps she was pushing it, maybe she shouldn’t be there at all, and maybe she should just forget what she’s feeling, respect the artist’s wishes and leave her alone. But of course, her mind wouldn’t allow her to do that, not someone like her, who always, unapologetically, strikes for what she wants and it’s constantly bending boundaries to get what she thinks that she deserves.

“Come on, don’t be a coward” She said to herself, taking a deep breath and finally opening the door. She stepped outside and looked both ways before crossing the one-way street, even though the residential neighborhood was basically empty at that time in the morning.

She locked her car and walked away, reaching the gate and quickly pressing on the intercom button. She was met with a male voice.

“Yes ma’am?” She heard through the electronic box and she stuttered on her words, just then realizing that she didn’t even knew what to say. Before panic started to rise in her chest, she took a deep breath and spoke up.

“Hi, good morning! I’m here to see Zulema Zahir. But she’s not expecting me... it’s a surprise visit” She told the gatekeeper; her hands were sweating cold and her voice wasn’t half as steady as she wanted it to be. She wanted to tell herself that it was because of the cold weather, but she had never minded the coldness before.

“Ma'am, what’s your name? I’ll let Ms. Zahir know that you’re here and-"

“No, I rather you didn’t! Can you just let me in?” Maca interrupted, leaning her face closer to the speaker as if it would make her voice sound less shaky than it actually was.

“Ma’am I can’t let you in without a resident’s authorization” Maca heard the deep voice inform. She closed her eyes and ran her hand through her hair, looking away at the streets.

When she first searched the address and saw where it was, she figured that they wouldn’t just let anyone in, but she had to try. She knew that If the doorman was the one to call up to the artist’s apartment, the woman wouldn’t have any trouble with blocking her entrance. But, if she could be there and get the phone when the man called up for authorization, she was sure that the woman wouldn’t be able to tell her no. The brunette didn’t seem to be great with that kind of confrontation, and Maca would try to use that in her favor.

“Look, she’s a work colleague, but we haven’t talked in a while and I really would like to surprise her” The blonde lied, but heard no response “Can you at least let me wait inside while you call her? I’m freezing in here” She tried, blowing warm puffs of air into her hands to help them to not freeze out. When she heard no answer from the gatekeeper, she groaned before speaking again.

“Come on.. I’m not a burglar, I promise.... just let me in before I turn into an ice sculpture?” she offered her sweetest voice and most innocent smile, even though she wasn’t sure if the man could see her or not. She got her answer when the gate opened with a loud noise and the deep voice on the intercom told her to get in. She smiled sincerely then, and said a soft ‘thank you’ through the speaker. 

She pushed the gate ajar and got in before closing it again; she looked at the tall building and took precise steps as she approached the lobby. She pushed through the glass doors and was immediately met with a security guard, a tall man who looked at her as if he was trying to assess how much of a threat the blonde beauty could really be. Maca paid him no mind and continued to walk until she reached the reception. 

“Hi.” Maca smiled while approaching the gatekeeper, who in return just nodded his head. “I’m Macarena Ferreiro” she let him know and he once again nodded.

“I’ll let Ms. Zahir know that you’re here” the man’s voice was even deeper than it had benn through the intercom. Maca watched him picking up the phone, and before he could dial, she interjected again.

“I’m sorry... sorry, but” She said while motioning with her hands to let the man know that he should put the phone down and not dial right now. He didn’t, he just watched her like he was running out of patience in rapid speed in this cold morning. “Would it be possible for me to call up? I think she’ll be more _receptive_ if I’m the one calling... is that ok?” Maca tried, frowning and waiting for the answer.

“No, ma’am, that is not the protocol.” The older man answered, looking at the blonde who didn’t even resembled to be defeated. The woman looked like she could be a true stone in one’s shoes, so he took a deep breath and did the next best thing to help the girl. “I’ll call up and see if Ms. Zahir will agree to talk to you" he informed and was immediately met with Maca’s big and sincere smile, as she nodded in agreement.

The man hit the line button and proceeded to dial the number to reach the penthouse. Maca watched with expectant eyes and a focused expression on her face. Soon the line picked up and she heard the doorman talk.

“Good morning, Ms.Zahir... I’m well, ma’am, thank you for asking.. What about you?” Maca smiled again, taking-in the politeness that the two people exchanged.

“I’m glad ma’am... I’m calling because you have a visitor... Macarena Ferreiro.. yes, ma’am, she informed me that it is a surprise visit” the man glanced at Maca and she nodded.

“No, ma’am. She’s right here... yes.. no, right in front of me.” He looked away from Maca and focused on the call while the blonde waited “She would like to talk to you, ma’am... that’s right, right in front of me” the man nodded and Maca smiled, wondering what Zulema must be saying.

The doorman was in silence for a few seconds and Maca used her facial expression and a nod of the head to silently ask ‘ _well? Can I have the phone now?’_ to which he answered by shaking his head in the negative. Maca’s expression dropped and she finally felt her patience slipping away, to her this whole situation was ridiculous and, quite frankly, rude.

“Are you not going to allow me in? Knowing I’m right here?” She asked, leaning closer to the phone that the doorman was still holding to his ear, and speaking loudly enough to make sure that the woman at the other end heard her. Then she leaned back again, and looked at the doorman with her eyebrow raised, waiting for him to translate whatever the woman was saying through the phone. The man didn’t say anything else; he just nodded his head once or twice in agreement with whatever It was that he was hearing, and then trusted the phone towards Maca.

Maca looked at him somewhat surprised, and he just shrugged in return. She took the phone and raised it to her ear.

“Zulema? Hello.” She started, clearing her throat before continuing “This is Macarena, the photographer... yes, I remember...” she eyed the doorman and being as smooth as she could, she turned around so that she didn’t have to look at the man while she spoke with the woman who held all of her interest. “well, how was I supposed to let you know if you refused to give me your number?” She asks and couldn’t help the laugh that escaped from her lips when she heard the woman make a teasing joke at the other end of the line.

“What can I say? I’m very persistent... Yes, I’m aware.... no, it’s not that, but trust me.. you’ll like this surprise" she answered to the woman, before turning back around to face the doorman “So can I come up now? Because _this_ feels quite foolish to me.... ok then, yeah I’m passing it to him right now" she answered just before offering the phone back to the doorman.

“Yes ma’am? Yes, of course.” The doorman answered and just like that it was done, he hung up the phone and looked up at Macarena. He smiled a tired smile, like this whole interaction had been way more than what he was paid for and gestured with his hand to let the girl know that she could go now.

“Wait.. here” he said just as Maca had turned around to head for the elevator. He offered a card to her. “Penthouse. Press the button on the elevator and pass this through... it won’t move if you don't use it" he warned and Maca nodded, taking the key-card and finally moving away from the lobby.

Once she was inside the elevator, she pressed the button corresponding to the last floor and used the card. With no further trouble, the elevator started to move. She fixed her sweatshirt to make sure she looked presentable. “Yeah, last thing you want is to look ridiculous” she said, rolling her eyes at the pathetic scene involving the doorman, who must think that the girl was a weirdo or a stalker by now, and the reluctant brunette. 

The elevator came to a stop and the doors abruptly opened, she felt butterflies flowing inside of her stomach. Butterflies that the blonde immediately crushed before taking a step outside. She refused to feel like a teenager on a first date, for this moment.

She got out and looked around the hallway _, that wasn’t quite a hallway since it had a lot of furniture that made the place look like a fancy entry way_ , and moved until she was in front of the only door in the place. She took a deep breath and knocked, with a new rush of determination coursing through her.

It took a few seconds for the door to open but when it finally did, she understood why she went through all of this trouble to find a woman that she had seen one time. She understood exactly why she was there and knew right then that she would embarrass herself in a thousand different ways if it meant that by the end of it, she would have at least a chance to get to know the brunette better.

“Hi” Maca breathed out, a trying smile on her face. She wished that she had planned this better, because all it took was one look at the brunette and her brain completely forgot what it was that she went there to do and how she had planned to approach it.

The artist was wearing a hooded grey jacket and black sweatpants, her hair was messy and her eyes were puffy. The woman didn’t have an ounce of make-up on her face, and Macarena thought that she never seen a prettier person. She only noticed that she was staring when the brunette uncomfortably shifted and pulled her jacket closed, keeping her arms crossed over it.

“How did you find me?” Zulema asked, her voice low and calm.

“With a lot of persistence and enough chocolate cookies to feed a family” Maca smirked.

Zulema just stared at her, not understanding at all how the woman turned up in her doorstep, _or why,_ and not feeling interested or in the mood for whatever this was.

“This isn’t amusing.. I said goodbye.. I chose to not give you my number, _nor my address_.. How are you here? Don’t you see that this is… very unorthodox, and quite frankly; uncomfortable” Zulema stated, pulling on the fabric of her jacket and keeping her hands wrapped around her waist and chest, as If that would hide or protect her from the unexpected visit.

It didn’t matter that the blonde had been present in her mind for every day since their first encounter, it didn’t matter that for some reason her heart had skipped a few beats when she set eyes on delicate features again. That didn’t matter at all to her, it certainly didn’t make the sudden appearance seem any less inappropriate.

“I know” Maca answered, now with her smirk gone and a more understanding expression on her face.

“Look, I understand that I make you uncomfortable and it’s strange that I showed up like this, unexpected and _uninvited_.. but quite frankly _I don’t care,_ I have not been able to stop thinking about you and all of the things that you didn’t told me, ever since I dropped you back at the magazine” Maca was as sincere as she possibly could.

She could tell about all of the hours that she spent looking at the brunette’s pictures in her laptop, and she could tell about all of the hoops that she had to jump just to get the woman’s address. But she wouldn’t, there was no need to make the woman even more skittish than she was right now.

“I need to know more about you, so I decided that I would make you an offer… if you don’t feel even the least bit interested by it, I’ll leave and I’ll never come looking for you again. So, hear me out.. _what do you have to lose anyways_?” Maca asked, raising her eyebrows, a hopeful expression on her face.

Zulema looked at everything except at the blonde standing in front of her. She kept her eyes low and was completely motionless, Maca wondered If the woman was even hearing her at all.

“You can’t honestly say that you didn’t think about me at all, can you?” Maca questioned, trying to catch the woman’s attention. She suppressed a gloating smirk when the artist’s eyes immediately shot up and caught hers. ‘Y _ou did think of me.’_

“I didn’t” Zulema lied, shaking her head and looking away again.

“Ok… can I please come in? can we talk? It won’t take a minute, and whatever you decide then, I’ll accept it one-hundred percent.” She nodded to reaffirm her words when the brunette looked at her again.

“I’m sorry.. yes, please come in” Zulema answered, like she just now realized that she hadn’t invited the blonde in and was still half-hiding behind the door. She opened the door further and allowed the blonde to enter her home.

Macarena’s pupils had to immediately adjust when she entered the place, the apartment was so dark that it felt like she had just stepped into another time-zone, like it wasn’t eleven in the morning. Once her eyes adjusted to the dim-lightening, she looked around the place; it was exceptionally clean and very minimalistic, it looked wonderfully comfortable, but it wasn’t half as luxurious as it would be if the floor-to-ceiling windows weren’t hidden behind blinds and the light was brighter, like it usually was on most penthouses that Macarena had been to.

Zulema watched Macarena intently, her eyes glued to the woman’s back as she looked around.

She didn’t enjoy having strangers in her home; she didn’t enjoy having anyone in her home, to be honest. But with the blonde, she was too busy wondering what the woman was thinking, what she was doing there, to really be bothered by the intrusion. She watched with the most attention as the blonde took a few steps in, not bothering to look back for permission, or to pretend that she wasn’t trying to memorize everything about the place.

Macarena’s eyes quickly found an enormous portrait that covered half a wall to the right side of the living-room, it was a picture in black-and-white of a woman lying in bed, only wearing a black lose shirt and white underwear, while staring at the camera. She would recognize that photography style anywhere.

“Is that a-?” She turned around to look at Zulema as she started her question but was caught by surprise with the way that the woman was already looking at her. Like the artist was caught in spell, with her big emerald eyes watching Maca.

Zulema averted her eyes as soon as Macarena looked at her, but she wasn’t fast enough, and the woman noticed that she’d been glaring. She cleared her throat and fidgeted with the sleeves of her jacket.

“Donna Gottschalk” She said, trying to make the blonde look away at the photograph again, and allow her to breath away from the intensity of her eyes. “If you were going to say, ‘Is that a Donna Gottschalk’ then yes, it is” She shyly stated, still not meeting Maca’s gaze.

Macarena watched the woman for a second longer, then turned away and looked at the portrait. She knew that her presence made the brunette feel out of comfort, for whatever reason, and she didn’t intent on playing with it this time around.

“Yes, that’s where I was going with my question” the blonde confirmed, taking a few steps closer to the picture and looking at it more carefully. It seemed like the perfect match for the enormous place that was only illuminated by a dim- orange light coming from a lamp by the side of the couch and the Christmas lights that seemed to decorate two whole walls in the living room, including the blinds that kept the natural light from coming through the windows. The light made the painting look a lot more alluring and majestic.

“You’re a fan of her work? I didn’t think you cared about photography at all” Maca said, remembering how in their ‘ _date’_ a few days ago, the brunette didn’t seem even half as interested by her work, as Maca was by hers.

“I like _things_ that have _life…_ and to me, that photography is more alive than so many people that I have met” Zulema explained, moving further into the living-room and setting her eyes in the picture, feeling more comfortable now that the blonde wasn’t trying to read into her soul with those hazel eyes.

“You like _things_ that have _life”_ Maca echoed, not as a question nor an affirmation; just as something that she heard and decided to keep.

Zulema moved until she was standing next to Maca, both looking at the painting and letting it transport them to somewhere else for a second.

“Yeah… things that have life” Zulema quietly breathed out and looked at the photographer.

Maca looked back to meet Zulema’s eyes and they stared at each other, like they weren’t strangers to one another. _like they were something that was meant to happen in their lives._

Zulema was the first one to break the moment, clearing her throat and walking away. She didn’t know what to do or where to go, she just wanted to put some space between her and the blonde.

“Are _you_ a fan of her work?” Zulema wondered, noticing now how the blonde had recognized the picture at just one glance.

Maca watched Zulema from afar, taking-in the way that the woman didn’t seem to know what to do with herself in Maca’s presence, even though she was in her own home and Maca should be the one feeling like the intruder.

“Yes.. She seemed to always know what she wanted to capture and she did it to excellence.. she had a purpose.” Maca answered, turning to look at the work “This one I particularly like because of the sadness of it.. You look at this portrait of a stunning, half-naked woman.. and you can’t see anything but despair _in it_ and _around it._. And I think that _that’s_ as close to perfection as a picture can get” She stated, taking a deep breath while she appreciated the art.

“You know this?” The blonde whispered “When you shoot for something beautiful, then the truth comes out and it becomes so.. heart wrenching?” she asked, and Immediately looked back when the brunette answered with a simple ‘ _yes'._

Maca knew that Zulema understood perfectly what she was talking about, she’s has seen almost everything that the brunette has created. She had owned a couple of pieces, cherished it and cried over it.

When the photographer looked back at her, she allowed it this time, she didn’t run away. She stared right back and silently asked the woman what she was doing there, what did she want.

Maca understood; somehow, they didn’t seem to need words to communicate with each other.

“I told you that I had a something that you would like” Maca commented, bringing them back to her purpose.

Zulema shook her head “If it’s the pictures, I really don’t need them”

“I also told you that it isn’t that” Maca answered.

Zulema frowned, she couldn’t think of one single thing that the blonde could possibly have for her, if not the photos. “Then, I don’t understand” she said, with a question mark written on her face.

“Well, it’s more of a deal... you’ll get something that you want, and in return I’ll get something that I want” the blonde shrugged and Zulema’s frown got even deeper.

“I’m familiar with the concept of a deal, I just don’t understand what you could possibly want from me, and what would I ever want from you?” the artist questioned.

Maca snorted at Zulema, the woman could be so direct and dry with her words, and at the same time look like nothing but a shy young-girl trying to stay clear of anything that could shatter her glass bones.

“Wow, you really have a talent for making me feel like the most boring and unworthy woman on earth.” Maca smirked, not the least bit offended but playing it like she was “I have a lot to offer, you know? You could at least pretend to be interested.”

Zulema looked at her with a deep apologetic frown on her face, she shook her head and opened her mouth to speak a couple of time but couldn’t think of any appropriate words to say to the blonde.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just meant... Joder, I don’t know what I meant” Zulema sincerely apologized, missing the teasing behind the blonde’s words, and feeling terrible about having hurt someone else’s feelings.

Maca looked at the woman up and down, trying to figure out how to make her feel less uncomfortable, because right then, the woman looked like she was about to burst into an anxiety attack, or something of the sorts.

“I was just kidding, I know you didn’t meant anything by it” The blonde stated, losing the smirk she had before. “I really don’t mean to make you this uncomfortable, Zulema ” Maca continued and Zulema looked up at her again.

Zulema shifted in her step and looked away for a second, taking a deep breath then returning her glare to the blonde and slightly smiling “ _Meaning_ or _not meaning_ things.. It doesn’t really mean anything, isn’t that it?” she shrugged.

Maca smiled and nodded, remembering her own words at their photoshoot.

“No, it doesn’t” Maca agreed.

They got silent for a while and the tension seemed to escalate in rapid speed within their surroundings.

Zulema felt as if her heart was about to beat its way out of her chest, but she wouldn’t show it.

Maca looked at the woman expectantly, she just didn’t know what for.

She ran her hand through her hair and raised her eyebrow “uhm.. do you have some coffee here? I’m addicted and forgot to get my fix before leaving my apartment this morning” Maca asked instead of continuing to explain what she really wanted from the woman. She didn’t really need coffee, she had almost an entire bottle of it before leaving her place, what she really wanted was to give the brunette an excuse to move away and get busy with something, perhaps that way she would be less apprehensive.

Zulema nodded and already started towards the open concept kitchen, that wouldn’t put her away from the blonde’s sight but would at least put some space between them “Of course! I should’ve offered before, lo siento… I don’t get many visitors, _or any visitors_ for that matter... I forget how to behave... sorry” She answered, looking back at Maca with an apologetic and sorrow expression on her face.

Maca watched the woman with awe, she wanted nothing more than to understand the brunette better. Maca was fascinated by how the woman could go from not wanting to even allow her to come up, to being angry about the persistence that Maca showed, to finally being apologetic about her social skills.

Maca smiled and shook her head, looking away from the brunette and going back to looking at the apartment instead. “It’s fine, I forget how to behave too.” She replied.

“Why is it so dark in here? It feels like we’re in the middle of the night” She questioned, looking back at Zulema for a second, then pushing herself away from her spot and taking a few steps to be able to take-in the place.

Zulema fumbled with the coffee machine and didn’t bother to look back at the woman. She didn’t really have an answer for that, not one that wouldn’t make them both uncomfortable; She lived in the dark because the light was too real and too revealing, and she had a lot to hide from.

“I feel more comfortable like this, I always preferred the night-time. So I figured I could live in it” She answered. It was a lie, she used to love daylight, the bright and warm mornings, the sunshine that made everything seem better and happier, she used to love all that. “It just feels more like home” It didn’t, things just felt less painful in the dark.

She started the machine and opened the cabinet just above her head, taking out two mugs and settling against the counter. She turned around and leaned her back against it, looking at the blonde moving inside her home as if she had been there a thousand times before.

“You really are intrigued by everything, aren’t you?” Zulema questioned when she saw Maca curiously looking at the covered mirror by the wall, in the other end of the room from her.

Macarena looked back like she had been caught in a private moment, she offered a big smile to Zulema and nodded her confirmation to the woman’s question “I’m intrigued by intriguing people and the way that they live” She answered, her eyes big and shiny, while she looked at Zulema and briefly pointed at the covered object that was hanging in the wall “This is a mirror... Why did you cover it? Is it a form of art, or is it just another way of hiding from yourself?” She asked before she could reconsider her words.

Zulema was caught off guard by the bluntness and quickly turned away again “Jesus!” She said under her breath while she turned off the coffeemaker and moved to bring the mugs closer to the pot. She wondered what was this gift that the blonde had to make her feel completely uncomfortable and forced to tell the truth.

Maca closed her eyes for a second and cursed herself for being like that. Her point was to make the woman feel as at ease as possible, but how could she ever do that if everything about the artist made her feel utterly drawn and fascinated? She didn’t mean to be as forward as she was about things, but she also didn’t know how to hide how captivated she was.

“I don’t really care, Zulema” Maca said, the woman’s name still felt like a prayer on her lips. “I mean, I care, but.. I just want to know more…I’m not in the business of judging...” She tried, her eyes meeting Zulema’s, once the woman had turned to face her again. Zulema smiled and nodded.

“I don’t think you’re judging” Zulema breathed out, showing the mug of coffee to Maca before settling it in the counter in front of her. “You just ask things that most people would have the common sense to not ask, and I don’t like that.. because when you ask them I, _somehow_ , just really want to answer with the truth” Zulema looked down to her mug, she could already feel the anxiety crippling inside of her.

“Then answer with the truth” Maca shrugged.

She didn’t take her eyes away from the brunette for a second. She took delicate steps until she was at behind the counter that separated them, she could’ve reached for her coffee and maintained the distance between them, but instead she rounded the place and moved until she was standing in front of Zulema. No more than a few inches between their bodies.

Her heart pounded strongly inside her chest, but she didn’t let it stop her. She reached out and let her hands wrap around Zulema’s, that were gripping the mug of coffee with way more strength than it was needed. The artist immediately looked up after feeling the compelling touch, her were eyes wide with surprise and she swallowed hard, the world seemed to stop for them. If only for a second. 

Maca was sure that if the woman wasn’t cornered, she would have fled by then. So she let her hands fall away and moved back, taking her mug and letting her back rest against the counter, imitating Zulema’s stand.

“Being truthful is the only way to heal, you know?” Maca breathed out, Zulema’s eyes were still wide and glued to her, like the woman was still shocked from the kind touch that the blonde had so unexpectedly offered.

“I don’t know your pain, I don’t know why it hurts you so much.. but I can see it, I can feel it whenever you’re close… telling your truth can help you, and I think you deserve to heal, Zulema. Don’t you?” Maca whispered, her brows furrowed.

This was all about her, but it was also, so undeniably, so assuredly about the artist, about giving her a voice and demanding that she let it be heard.

“No” Zulema whispered back, lightly shaking her head while a set of tears slipped from her eyes. The atmosphere had gotten so heavy around them that it was hard to even breathe.

“And I don’t know how you got here or why you’re so interested by me.. but I think you should leave” Zulema found her voice again, wiping her tears and turning away from the blonde. She put her mug down by the counter and moved pass Maca and into the living-room.

Maca followed, with her mug still in hand and her heart heavy with the pain that she could feel emanating from the artist. “I don’t think I should leave” Maca shook her head and Zulema looked at her as if she was running out of ways to stop an anxiety attack from coming “I think I should stay… at least until I make the offer that I came here to make, ok?” Maca asked, she tried to sound calmer and sweeter, less like herself, to make the woman less nervous.

“Like I said, if you’re not interested, I’ll go and never look for you again” she continued, moving closer to Zulema’s space but not getting too close, afraid that she would cause the woman to have a breakdown if she didn’t allow the much-needed space between them.

“Can we just sit and talk?” Maca asked.

Zulema wanted to flee the scene, but she was far too out of her element to even know how to do it, so she just went along with Maca’s request. She slightly nodded and motioned with her hand to let Maca know that she could take a seat at the couch just behind her, while she took a seat at the chair in the opposite side.

“I think you’re wasting your time, there isn’t much that would interest me.. and even if it did, I’m not as interesting as you think am I, I’m just another artist hiding behind art to see if living will hurt less that way.. the world is full of us, some would be far more willing to give you whatever it is that you seek” Zulema said, biting her nails to try and ease her anxiety.

Maca sat down and sipped from her coffee before letting the mug rest in the center piece in front of her. She looked up at Zulema again “I’m sure you’re right. But what I seek, I seek from you only.” Maca shrugged, her eyes burning into Zulema.

Zulema looked down at the dark floor, she suddenly wished that the apartment wasn’t as dark as it was, some light would have definitely made that moment feel less intense than it was. She looked up at Maca again and waited for the woman to carry the conversation, knowing full well that she would just fluster herself if she tried to form sentences in that moment.

Maca took Zulema’s silence and undivided attention as the opportunity that she needed to present her offer.

“Mira, I can see that you’re uncomfortable and, _for some reason_ , I’m uncomfortable for making you uncomfortable. So, I’m just going to offer what I think is fair and then we can move along, alright?” Maca asked, taking a deep breath and raising her eyebrows at Zulema, waiting for acceptance.

Zulema nodded, her attention divided between the blonde and biting her fingernails. She knew that if she continued, she would most likely hurt herself as she had already bitten her nails to almost extinction, during these past few days, but she didn’t mind.

Maca nodded once and took a deep breath before speaking. “I want to photograph you again..” She started and watched as Zulema looked at her through knitted brows while she continued to devour her fingertips. “But not just photograph, not like at the studio.. I want more, I want to truly see you. And hear you. With no barriers, no hiding.. I don’t want a time to stop and I don’t want half-honesty.” She stated, her eyes burning into Zulema while the woman returned the glare with wide emerald eyes.

Maca continued “I want it all, everything that you can give.. no.. actually, I want what you can’t and does not want to share, I want all of your fears and ugliness.. that’s why I’m here, that’s why I couldn’t stop thinking about you for a second since I last saw you.. because you’re in my brain like no model has ever been, you fascinate me like no subject has ever did. And I want to capture every single one of your emotions”.

Zulema stared at Maca like the woman was the most compelling speaker that she had ever hear. She raised one eyebrow and removed her finger from her lips just long enough to ask

“Why would I want that?”

“ _You wouldn’t_. Not a lot of people are into being analyzed, being a photographer’s muse, if you will..” Maca answered, getting up from the sofa and taking careful steps towards Zulema who watched her intently while chewing on her nails for dear life.

Maca took her phone out of her back pocket and unlocked it, touching the screen a few times to find what she was looking for while Zulema looked up at her with wide eyes, not moving and apparently not even breathing while the blonde stood tall in front of her.

Maca finally found what she wanted and glanced at Zulema before offering her phone to the woman. Zulema continued to look at the blonde, ignoring the phone and trying to read the photographer’s mind instead.

“But you want that, and to get it.. you’ll take my offer” Maca nodded, looking at the phone to let Zulema know she should look at it too. Zulema let her eyes search Maca’s features for a few more seconds before she finally looked down at the device.

Her eyes settled on the big screen and suddenly chewing her nails didn’t seem so appealing anymore as she let her hand fall from her lips and reached for the phone. She looked at the screen and leaned forward in her chair, her eyes not wide like before, but much more attentive. Her fingers moved of their own accord as she let it swipe over the glass and was met with another photo of the same subject, then another, and another. She looked up at Maca, she got up from her seat, she looked down at the phone again.

“H-how?” the question falls from her lips, though it didn’t really matter.

“It involved two assholes, and a whole lot of money” She shrugged, the artist looked up at her again.

“You were the highest bidder?” Zulema questioned, even though the answer was obvious.

Maca nodded and slightly smiled. “That piece had me transfixed the moment I set eyes on it, and it made me cry.. I don’t cry, ever.” She shrugged, and that was all the explanation that she could offer as to why she spent so much money on a painting.

“Back at the café, you told me about this painting, and at the magazine you told me just how much it means to you” Maca delicately took her phone from Zulema’s hand “It means a lot to me too, I would never give it away.. if I had any other choice” She breathed out, putting her phone back in her pocket and moving back to sit in the sofa again.

Maca reached for her mug of coffee and took a big gulp of it before addressing Zulema, who stood there looking at the blonde like she didn’t quite knew what to do with herself.

“It’s yours, if you want it enough.” Maca said, looking up at her model. The deafening silence that surrounded them was all the answer that she needed.

“So my offer is, you’ll be my model.. you’ll show me your truth, your sorrow, your regrets, your scars, and all of the endless, _breath taking_ , beauty that evolves around, and within you.. and in exchange you’ll get back your painting about death, the one that got away” The photographer offered with her most challenging glare.

Zulema was struck to her spot, her head was pounding, and her heart was racing, but on the outside she was motionless. She remembered not only creating the painting, but also all of the feelings that roared inside her chest when she did. She remembered what it was about. She remembered the death and decay on it.

She nodded, she ran her hand through her hair, and she sat back on her chair before the heavy gravity brough her down against her will.

Maca nodded in return and continued to speak then “Six months” She started “We’ll meet, and I’ll photograph you for six months and we’ll talk, too. Then after, you’ll get the painting and we’ll be done. If you wish it so; you’ll never hear from me again” She made her first and final offer.

Zulema could barely breath, she could barely think, and she could barely speak. She thought that this was cruel, to have to make a deal to get something that was always meant to be only hers, but she knew that life had always been particularly cruel when it came to her, and what she wanted. She nodded, she cleared her throat and answered “Yes”.

Maca took a deep breath in and slowly let it out, she wouldn’t show how relieved and thankful she was that Zulema had agreed. She honestly didn’t know how she would ever be able to keep on existing if the woman had said ‘no’ and she never got to see her again. She hadn’t even tried to imagine that scenario.

“Ok, then” She answered, moving to drink from her mug again. She watched the artist as the woman looked at her like she was still working to process the whole thing.

“This won’t be as bad as you might think it will.. I’m actually a nice person, you’ll learn to look beyond my direct and strange ways.. and I’ll share things too, its only fair” Maca nodded, trying to reassure the woman. Zulema finally looked at her like she wasn’t in a whole different dimension and nodded back. The artist tried to force a smile, but she really couldn’t, so she continued to just glare through her big, mesmerizing eyes.

“Ok” Was all that the brunette could bring herself to say.

Maca nodded one last time and got up from the sofa, this time adjusting her clothes and settling down the almost empty mug of coffee. She cleared her throat and extended her hand to Zulema, as her way of closing the deal and moving on.

Zulema took a second to understand, but quickly got to her feet when she did. She extended her hand to meet Maca’s and allowed the woman to hold it against her own as she shook it. Zulema didn’t even tried to meet Maca’s smile and quickly separated their skin. She looked down at the floor again and tried to not recognize the way that a flame had shot through her palms, going through her arms and traveling through her entire body at the fleeting touch, much like it had before, when they were in the kitchen. She didn’t understand it, nor did she want to.

“It won’t be as bad as your mind is trying to convince you that it will… I promise” Maca whispered, a sympathetic smile on her face. She really had no interest in making the woman feel uncomfortable or apprehensive, besides what it appeared, she did not enjoy making the artist feel exposed. All that she wanted was more time and some honesty from her, she wanted the scaring beauty that the woman brough to her pictures. She just lacked the skills to do this in a more honorable way.

“Nothing is ever as bad as my mind convinces me that it is.. but that doesn’t make any difference, really.. if my mind believes that something will be bad, then It will be.. either it really is or not. Doesn’t matter” Zulema answered, shrugging in the tired way that she did. 

Macarena nodded in agreement, she looked down at her boots the looked back at the artist.

“I’ll leave you be, now” She stated, watching at the brunette for a few second longer before turning and walking towards the door.

Zulema followed the photographer quietly, having a million of questions and statements running through her head, things that she would like to voice but lacked the courage to.

Maca walked in silence as well, just thinking that she was thankful that this was done and now they could move on to the most important parts of this deals. The parts that gave her what she desired, _even though she wasn’t completely sure on what that was._

When they arrived at the door, Maca looked back at Zulema. She wanted to smile but the artist looked so grim that she thought it wouldn’t be right to be happy about something that clearly didn’t make the woman feel as excited as she did.

“Will you give me your number now?” Maca raised her eyebrow and took her phone out again.

Zulema smiled then and nodded “I don’t know how you got my address but didn’t get my number” she said, taking the phone from the blonde and saving her contact.

“I know, I was all over the place with that one” Maca teased back and they both smiled for a second. Maca took her phone and looked at the newest and most import information that the device now held.

“I’ll call you to go over things before our first session, ok?” Maca asked with expectant eyes.

“Ok” Zulema agreed, with a not so thrilled expression on her face.

They stood there, awkward looking at each other for a moment.

Maca cleared her throat and finally reached for the handle to open the door, she stepped outside, and they said goodbye with a nod of their heads.

“I’ll see you soon” the blonde offered and Zulema smiled as a response.

“See you soon” the artist said just before she finally closed the door of her apartment.

Maca pushed the button on the elevator and the doors opened in a second, like it was right there waiting to lead her away from the intensity of the brunette’s presence. She stepped inside and pushed the button to go down. As soon as the doors were closed, she exhaled her relief, feeling both happiness and guilt. She leaned her body forward and suddenly found herself smiling, the most content and satisfied smile that she had in a while.

_‘Six months’_ she thought as her smile just kept getting bigger and bigger.

Meanwhile, Zulema had let her body slide down on her door as soon as she heard the elevator closing and taking away the intense blonde. She was currently sitting on the floor, wondering if any of it had really happened or if it had all been an elaborated illusion that her sleep-deprived brain had created. She ran her hand through her hair and replayed their whole conversation in head.

_“I’ll photograph you for six months and we’ll talk, too. Then after, you’ll get the painting and we’ll be done.”_

She got up from the floor and examined her hand, seeing that she had managed to draw blood from her finger after having a feast out of her nails. She lost the hooded jacket that she had been wearing and let it fall to the floor, also removing her shirt before she started towards her bathroom, now only in bra and sweatpants. She had sweated through her entire outfit as hazel eyes seemed to burn her from the inside-out.

When she got to the bathroom, she washed away the blood from her fingertips and found a band-aid to put over it. Then, she pushed down her sweatpants and stepped out of them on her way out again. She stopped by her laundry-room and picked up an oversized shirt to wear while she did her chores and pushed-off on taking a shower, knowing that she would feel deadbeat and ready for bed as soon as she did.

The artist moved through the hallway until she reached her art-room and stepped inside, she walked to the corners where she kept the lamps that would illuminate the place and turned on both of them. When she could actually see the room, she moved back and let her eyes set at the paintings in front of her, going from one to the other and back again. She breathed out and ran her hand through her face, looking at not one, not two, but three portraits that she had painting of the blonde that had just left her apartment. 

_“You can’t honestly say that you didn’t think about me at all, can you?”_ Zulema shook her head while replaying the photographer’s words. “No, I can’t” She now answered with the truth.

She moved closer to one of the paintings, and let her fingers run through the screen, traveling over the waves of blonde, heavenly hair. She quickly let her fingers drop and stepped away from the painting, as if it were poisonous rather than a beautiful art that her mind had created.

“Six months” She breathed out, one hand laying above her heart while the other was raised to her lips as she proceeds to bite on the nails that she still hadn’t bruised and harmed.

 _“I want all of your fears and ugliness.. That’s why I’m here.”_ Zulema shook her head, thinking who would ever want that from someone, let alone someone like her.

“Six. months” She whispered again in the otherwise empty room. She finally let her eyes rest from the perfect image of the blonde beauty on her canvases and got out of the room, shutting down the lights and realizing that if she didn’t take her shower and went to sleep within the hour, she was likely to burst from emotional and physical exhaustion...

She got all of her housekeeping done, showered and was now laying in her bed. Drifting off to sleep and not even trying to stop the images of the photographer that kept appearing behind her closed eyelids, nor bothering to repel the vivid feeling of the electrifying touch that the blonde had left in her skin.

 _‘Just six months, then it’ll all be done’_ Zulema thought to herself, then she was finally gone to a much-needed sleep.


	8. Viewpoint

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's embarrassing how I don't update for two months then come back with a filler chapter. I apologize for this. 
> 
> I've made a few minor changes in the details in the first chapters bc I noticed that I'm really inconsistent with a few things (so if you notice those inconsistencies, please try to look past it. and also look past the typos) 
> 
> ***In this chapter, as well as we'll see throughout most of this story, there's sensitive discussions revolving around mental health problems. If you're sensitive to that, you shouldn't read this. There's -mentions- of heavy moments about depression so tread lightly***
> 
> Now, If you're interested, the background song for this chapter is 'Ask (Demo)' by Sharon Van Etten. 
> 
> Leave a comment if you like this :) bye, bye now.

* * *

It’s been three days since the photographer had been to Zulema’s home and made her proposal. Zulema was standing in the darkness of her kitchen, half-bend on the counter, using her elbows as support as she drank from a glass of wine and pretended to not stare at the clock every ten seconds. They were supposed to meet today and, _surprisingly_ , Zulema felt something similar to excitement about it. Though it had been so long since she felt those kinds of feelings about anything, that she was barely able to recognize it. Maybe it was just a new form of anxiety, a lesser anxiety or something like that. 

She hadn’t slept more than a couple hours per night in these last few days, but, for some reason, she didn’t feel as miserable about it as she normally did.

She continued to sip from the tasty wine and let her eyes set on the clock again, groaning when she saw that she still had exactly twenty minutes to wait until she could leave her house and go to the location that they agreed upon. She finished her wine and considered refilling the glass, but decided against it, knowing that she needed to be as sober as possible around the blonde who was too curious for her own good.

She took a deep breath, and then let it out. She pushed herself away from the counter and went towards the sink where she set down the wine-stained glass, she would wash that later, _if she felt like it._ She moved towards the living-room and took a sit by the sofa.

Her eyes set on the clock again. ‘ _Eighteen minutes_.. _Fuck!’._

She _could_ leave right now if she really wanted to, it’s not like she was obligated to torture herself with anxiety until the eighteen minutes were up and she could go. But, Zulema liked to be on time, not late, not early. Just on time. And so as such, she would actually have to just accept the crippling anxiety and wait until it was the exact perfect minute to leave.

“When did I become such a prisoner of my own brain?” She asked herself, her voice was small but deep and she wondered if she had always sounded like that.

Sometimes she spent so many hours, days, and even weeks, in complete silence that she would forget that she even had a voice _. It didn’t matter anyway._

Zulema leaned back against the sofa and took another deep breath while looking up at the ceiling. She concentrated on the colors reflecting there, coming from the Christmas lights that she still hadn’t got around to taking it down, like she kept saying that she would.

She crossed her arms over her chest and let her legs bounce up and down freely, figuring that it was at least a way to let the consternation out of her body.

The photographer and her had been talking on the phone since the last time that the woman had been there. They talked every day, for hours, and as surprising as that was, the woman hadn’t tried to make her feel uncomfortable at all. They didn’t really talked about anything that mattered, they talked about the weather and how they both preferred the winter instead of summer. They talked about what they were currently working on, and a couple of times they just let the other stay on speaker while they concentrated on their tasks.

It was a ‘ _Getting familiar to one another, so that the next six months will actually be enjoyable instead of a obligation’_ kind of talk, as the woman had put it _._

Zulema glanced down at the clock again and was relieved to see that now it was only ten minutes of waiting. She realized then that she was sitting at the exact same spot that the blonde had sat when she’d been there, and if she concentrated enough, she could smell a faint fragrance that the woman had left there. She closed her eyes and softly breathed in. it was a sweet but captivating scent. It made her feel good.

She let her mind revisit the unimportant conversations that they had through the phone and soon found herself slightly smiling at one thing or another that the photographer had said.

 _She wasn’t there yet_ , but she figured that it wouldn’t be too difficult to become familiar and attached to the strange girl.

It was surprising though, how fast and smooth the photographer was about inserting herself into Zulema’s routine; she did it so well and so carefully that the brunette hadn’t even realized how comfortable she was already feeling with it. The artist had no idea that three days was all it took to make her walls slightly come down, even if just barely an inch, and allow a strange woman with a sweet smile and a sharp mind to take a peek behind the fortress that she kept around herself. 

The artist could see those hazel eyes every time that she closed her eyes, she could hear Macarena's voice and she could smell her perfume and she could feel the comforting warmth of her touch. It scared her, how much she wanted to hear the woman’s voice again, feel that soothing mix of perfume and just human warmth all around her. She really wanted to look into Macarena’s eyes and have the courage to not deflect her glare within seconds, to not crumble in front of her. She desired, _with more vehemence than she had desired anything for the last few years_ , to be brave enough so that she could be as curious with her questions as the photographer was; that strange need to know more, _simply_ _terrified her_.

Zulema was setting herself up for a fall that she could not survive under her current fragility, and the most dangerous thing was how indifferent she was about that knowledge, how uncaring about her own limitations the brunette was.

She opened her eyes and looked at the ceiling; she was so quiet that she was almost invisible inside the room, almost part of the furniture. She thought about those hazel eyes and they just seemed so clear to her, so truthful and full of confidence and defiance. They looked nothing like her own.

She took a deep breath and lifted her head from the headrest of the sofa. Her eyes immediately settled on the clock. _‘Joder, thank god’_ she thought as she saw that the ten minutes were finally up. She got up and grabbed her jacket, already on her way out the door, too anxious to meet the photographer that had, _somehow_ , become a constant thought in her head. A _nd for the next six months, apparently…_

* * *

At the other side of town, Macarena had just stepped into her boots and started going towards the door to finally leave for her most important meeting in a while. She didn’t have to leave just yet, she had a good twenty minutes before she had to get on her car, but she figured that she could stop by her favorite groceries store, instead of losing her mind inside of the colorless apartment while she waited on the clock to tell her that it was time.

She had stepped out, locked her door and soon had called the elevator, waiting a few seconds until the door opened and welcomed her in. She could feel a freezing feeling running up from the pit of her stomach to her chest, chilling everything in its wake until it traveled far up and reached the back of her head. She took a deep breath and tried to let it go. She pressed the button referring to the entrance floor and closed her eyes for a second as the elevator went down. She hadn’t been this excited about anything in such a long time. _If she had ever been this excited in her life, that is._

The artist had something that just made her feel exhilarated and apprehensive at the same time. Like a child on their first day of school.

The elevator came to a stop at the reception floor and she soon got out of it, shaking off the unwanted feelings and walking with purpose. She said ‘hello’ to Jackson and exchanged quick politeness before she finally made it to the street.

Only after she felt the striking cold hit her everywhere at once did she finally felt awakened and ready to face the world and whatever else.

She was wearing beige combat boots, blue denim jeans and a plain white shirt, nothing else to protect her body from the extremely low temperatures. She walked the streets and the colder she felt, the more energetic she became.

Soon enough she found herself at the grocery store. She checked the time to make sure that she wouldn’t be late, and then moved along to getting a couple of snacks that she could chew on until she arrived at the bakery where they agreed to meet.

She didn’t need to go all the way to the grocery store for that, but, _besides allowing her to leave her place earlier and not drive herself crazy,_ it would do her some good to see a friendly face, maybe it would calm her nerves, even if just a little.

She picked up a bunch of sweet snacks, that she figured it could last for more than month in her home and went to the cashier to check it out.

“Hi Owen” She smiled and the man blinked affectionately instead of verbally answering.

Owen subtly eyed the blonde as he checked-out and bagged the groceries that she’d bought.

“You don’t eat this kind of thing. And you don’t usually beam like that. What gives, child?” He asked. The girl had long ago become more than a costumer to him, and so he never minded to keep it to himself when he wanted to ask something to her, and in return, she offered him the same treatment.

“I have a date” She told him “Not a romantic date, but an important one nonetheless... It’s making me feel really nervous” Maca explained with an uneasy smile on her face, to really paint the picture.

The senior man quietly smiled at the obvious buzz and agitation that the blonde was showing and feeling. ‘ _Oh to be that young and that unsure about life.’_ He mused to himself.

Maca actually needed the man’s advice on how to not burst until she met the brunette. She didn’t know a lot of people in the city, _or in the whole country for that matter_ , and she didn’t mind a lot of people, but Owen she knew, _him_ she minded and appreciated. She would listen whenever he had something to say.

“You’re sure about the nonromantic part? You look awfully thrilled to be a _non-romantic_ date” Owen asked through his rough voice. In all the time that he has seen and interacted with the blonde, he has never seen her look as excited and nervous about anything. The girl was usually as unfazed as a jazz singer in the 70’s, always cool, calm and distant, with a dash of politeness and a whole lot of mystery to her, _definitely sweet_ but always too sharp to ever show herself beaming like she was then.

“Yes, I’m sure. It’s more of a meeting with someone that I have a _somewhat weird_ fascination with.. I’m just a bit chicken-shit sometimes, that’s all” Maca shrugged. She reached for her wallet and took out the money to pay for the snacks “Do you have some advice? Something that’ll help me with not giving-in to my curiousness and bluntness, that is.” Maca looked at the man with some expectation in her eyes and waited.

The older man, who looked as easy going as the blues that he was always listening to in his old little radio, shrugged and smiled “Fuck that, be curious and be blunt. If they can’t handle it, then too bad. Do you, kid. Anything else is just bullshit.” He stated, trusting the bag and the change to the young woman.

“Yeah, that’s.. that’s great advice Owen” Maca snickered, shaking her head “You should quit the store and give out advice for a living, really.” She took the bag and put the change on her back pocket, offering a teasing smile at the older man.

“Alright now” He smiled back “But really kid, just be you. You’re alright, and I’m sure that this non-romantic-date of yours will see that”

Maca looked at the older man but didn’t quite know what to say to that, so she just nodded, smiled and left the store, waving a chaste goodbye before the door closed behind her.

Once outside she exhaled and allowed herself to let go of the fear that she’d felt before.

Maca had never felt like that, she couldn’t quite put her finger around what it was exactly, but if she truly thought about it; it wasn’t really about the artist that she was meeting today, at least not completely. It was more about the fact that she had never cared about anything, nothing had ever seemed important enough to her. She never had something or someone that she would do _just about anything_ within her reach to be able to explore.

The photographer had never been as intrigued by a person _or by anything_ as she was by the shy brunette. The things that she cared about the most were photography and art in general, but that was the extent of it; she cared about it, she liked to admire all art and she liked doing photographs that would mean something and that would last, but, If she had to stop photographing tomorrow, never look at another piece of art again, she would be fine with it, she would, _at best_ , be disappoint about it, but nothing more. It wasn’t life stopping, she would live-on and find other things to keep her entertained. _but this_ , what she felt right then, as she walked to her car and realized that in about ten minutes, she would be with the brunette again; It felt like it was the most important thing that she had ever done, like she was finally doing something that truly, honestly, mattered to her. It also felt like something that would stop her life completely if she didn’t get the chance to explore.

She wondered why though; _out of all the lives, all of the people that she had met_ , why was Zulema Zahir the one that made her feel so out of her element? This one person, _who seemed to want nothing to do with her_ , was precisely the only person that she seemed to care about.

It didn’t go unnoticed by her that Zulema was a deeply depressed woman, and that knowledge just contributed to her lack of grasp on what was happening to herself; she wasn’t an apathetic person, but she was well aware that she had a tendency to avoid any and all situations that required more sensibility and understanding on her part.

She’d never cared for people who seemed to always have problems in their hands, and when she met someone who seemed to be troubled and in need of a more consistent care and assistance, she would just cut them off before it evolved into something that she would be stuck in. She didn’t want anybody else’s problems; she didn’t care about it, to be honest.

If a problem was unnerving someone that she loved, like her mother for example; she would help, _she would try her best_ , but she wouldn’t be caught up with it, she would do her best then be done. Maca was a true believer that each person should tackle their own demons; they should be able to face it by themselves and not need others, or they would never truly escape the hold that those demons had on them. That’s why she never went to anyone for help and why she was _disappointed_ whenever someone came to her hoping that she would solve their lives. She wouldn’t, she wasn’t really even allowed to. 

Now with Zulema, she didn’t feel like that. She could see that it would take a lot of effort to get through the woman. It would take time and consistency and consideration and a lot of empathy, and although those were all the things that she lacked the most, she wanted to try. She had to try. It almost frightened her how willing, _opened_ , she was to see what the artist had in her, to help, or to at least witness and hear what she had to say. To be capable of giving something back for once.

At the nights that she spent awake, thinking about this, she wondered if this was a self-sabotage thing that she decided to do to herself; something that she was set to fail it from the very start. But she knew that it wasn’t. She just had too much regard for herself and her life to ever do anything that she believed to be harmful for her in any way, and she _never_ did things which had failure as an option, that wasn’t her. The blonde also wondered if it was a career move, since she had wanted to get a better portfolio on human emotions for a long time now, but no, it wasn’t. If it was that, she could have her pick at the best models of Switzerland.

At last she wondered if it was one of those love-at-first-sight things that the romance books were always going on-and-on about, and that one was actually a thinker for her. But no, it wasn’t that either. What she felt for Zulema was more of a need to get to know her as a person, figure out the puzzle, what she was hiding behind those deep green eyes. She was just at a lost on how this would benefit her. It wasn’t about money, it wasn’t about her career, not about love nor sex, and it wasn’t about friendship either, she was never one to care about that. So she was utterly and tremendously confused as to what she wanted or where she intended to arrive with this mild obsession.

But she was hellbent on figuring out. And if by the end of it she still hadn’t understood what it was about, she would at least get out standing pictures of the beautiful artist who brought soul and devastation to everything that she touched.

“Well, Maca, curiosity was always the key.” She said to herself as she starts the car and started driving towards their meeting point. She put on some music and let it wash away her doubts. In a while she would be face to face with the brunette, and maybe then she would know…

* * *

“Would you like some pancakes, love?” The tall brunette asked, standing in front of the table and waiting for a reply from the puffy-eyed beauty that sat in the chair looking like she could use a couple more hours of sleep “Some coffee will do you good” She said while already moving to pour the dark liquid into the mug that was set by the rustic-style table.

“Thanks.. I feel like I haven’t slept at all” Rizos answered, looking up at her partner and pouting “If only I had a nice boss who allowed me to stay in today” She lazily smiled and Saray smiled back.

“If only” Saray answered pouting in the same way that Rizos did and earning a growl from the curly-haired girl. She sat the coffee pot down and pulled out her chair to sit and enjoy the breakfast that she had prepared. “You trashed and turned all night, mi amor.. bad dreams?” she asked.

Rizos shook her head, getting her mug and taking a sip before answering “Not really, I’m just worried about something” She stated, gazing at Saray while sipping from her mug again.

Saray frowned while getting some of the pancakes into her plate. She looked up to see her partner’s face “Qué pasa?” she asked, being familiar enough with her fiancé to know that she wasn’t usually the type of person who worried about things nor had a habit of losing sleep over anything.

Rizos put her mug down and reached for a strawberry that was set in a white bowl on the table. She took a small bite from the tasty fruit and considered if she should even bring it up, thinking that perhaps she was overthinking it, and this was really none of her business. She chewed the strawberry slowly and when she was done, she moved to get another one. She pretended that she wasn’t already bothered by the concerned look on Saray’s face. She swallowed the overly sweet fruit and decided to exchange her coffee for orange juice, since the bitterness of the sugarless dark liquid wasn’t really a good match to the sweet fruit that she chose to eat.

“Ok.. well I have to tell you something.” The younger woman started. “But you can’t overreact ok? It’s not bad and, well, it could actually be good _, if you choose to look at it objectively_ , not as overprotective mother” Rizos offered, and Saray’s frown got deeper.

“Qué pasa, Rizos?” The taller brunette asks again. She could tell that whatever it was it must be of some importance. She knew that Rizos was the kind of person to set fire to a house and be unbothered by it; the woman would get on the biggest argument then move on from it within seconds like it didn’t even happen, and without giving one second thought about it. So if she was losing sleep over something, it must matter.

Rizos bit her lower lip and looked at Saray through her big brown eyes, she exhaled. “You know Maca?” she asked and Saray leaned back on her chair, narrowing her deep-dark eyes but not answering “My friend from college, the one who just photographed for WC?” Rizos continued like she truly believed that Saray would’ve forgotten all about the woman that they saw a couple of weeks ago.

Saray rolled her eyes “Pues claro que la conozco, Rizos.” The gitana had no patience for going around with things. She liked things to be explained fast and clear, _and her partner knew that_ , so it just frustrated her when the woman wouldn’t just say what she had to say.

“Well, I kinda.. I mean, it isn’t bad, really.. it’s just, I know how protective you are and I get it, _sorta_ , but if you look at thi-“ Rizos stoped rambling when saray interjected.

“Joder, mi amor. Dime” The director frustratedly prompted, growing tired of waiting. 

Rizos exhaled and leaned forward on her chair. She looked at the table to avoid looking at her partner “I may or may not have given Zulema’s address to her” She breathed out in a small voice.

Saray watched Rizos for a couple of seconds, giving the woman a chance to say that it was a joke or something of the sorts, because truly, Rizos couldn’t be that irresponsible, she definitely wouldn’t intervene in Zulema’s life like that, she had no reason to.

“You’re joking, no?” She asks with her most serious face. Her frown was gone and replaced by that expression of hers that told Rizos that she wasn’t angry, she wasn’t sad nor upset, she was just serious; things just weren’t very amusing to her then and she would go from unbothered to pissed beyond correction within a second, all that it would take would be one more wrong answer.

Rizos looked at her and said nothing; she just glared into Saray’s eyes and tried to apologize silently. The taller brunette looked away and she could feel the anger rising within her. She shook her head and pushed her plate away in the table, as an angry teen might’ve done.

“Qué?” She frowns “La rubia te llama, pregunta por la dirección de Zulema, y qué? Y tú piensas ay qué gran idea, claro que tengo la dirección de Zulema! ahí Princesa” Saray growls with irritation, being too angry to commit to speaking in english in that moment. “No me jodas”

She’s so frustrated that she needs to do something, something to make the anger flow around her body and not accumulate on her brain and her fists. She takes her plate and glass of juice and moves to the open concept kitchen, where she can clean up to release the sudden tension, but still have a clear view of at Rizos.

“Come on! It’s not that big of a deal, mi amor.” Rizos says, getting up from her seat to move closer to Saray, but quickly sitting back down when her partner raised her eyes from the dishes and gave her a death stare to let her know that it was indeed a big deal.

“You’re exaggerating! it could be good, or it could be nothing. Not everything has to be so important, Saray” She exhaled, adjusting herself in her seat and deciding that she wouldn’t let that beautiful breakfast go to waste. If she was going to have a big fight with her beautiful fiancé in this fine morning, she mind as well do it on a full stomach.

Saray washed the plates and all of the utensils that she used to make breakfast and stayed in silent, glancing at Rizos every few seconds and feeling her sudden burst of anger slowly dissipating. She deeply exhaled and washed her hands before putting away the last Tupperware.

Rizos was calmly sitting and eating pancakes that she’d drowned in chocolate syrup. She found that it was really difficult to be angry, or upset, or anything, when her mouth was full of delicious food and she could eat as much as she wanted of it.

Saray dried her hands in a cloth kept by the sink and then neatly folded the fabric and set it down again. She looked at Rizos peacefully eating the pancakes that she’d made and the fact that she couldn’t be really angry at the curly-haired beauty just made her feel defeated.

“Vale, you’re right. It’s probably nothing, Zulema won’t talk to her. I’m sure she won’t get past the frontal gate.” The Gitana nodded to herself. She walked around the kitchen island and moved back to the table, but she didn’t sit though, she just stood at the far end, with her hands resting against the back of a chair.

“Why would you give her the address, Rizos?” She watched Rizos and shook her head. The woman just watched her through doe-eyes and drank from her glass of juice.

“Couldn’t it be the phone number or something? The address is just the first thing on the stalker starter-pack.” She pulled back the chair and sat on it, leaning forward and setting her elbows on the table.

“She’s not a stalker” Rizos answered while still chewing on the pancakes. Saray raised an eyebrow in a way that said ‘sure about that?’ and Rizos rolled her eyes. The younger woman swallowed her breakfast and took a deep breath before answering. “She’s just a bit weird. _Unsual_. But she’s actually great.”

Saray watched Rizos eyes for any sign of uncertainty but couldn’t find one. She looked down at the table and seemed to be considering if she could let her state of high alert and deep distress go for now.

“Didn’t you say that you weren’t really friends during college.. that you didn’t know her that well?” Saray questioned, remembering the quick conversation that they had about it while walking through the hallways of W.S.

Rizos looked down at the table for a second, then she looked up and shrugged “I lied” she answered.

Saray just watch her with an unreadable expression on her face and waited for more information.

“We were actually best friends during the last year of school. Then, she moved back to Madrid and that was it” she explained.

Saray nodded, but didn’t say anything about it, though she will, for sure, revise that later. “Vale, doesn’t mean shit. That was year ago, she might’ve become a creep since then.. or she might’ve been one all along, and you just didn’t see it past the crush you had on the ‘typical blonde beauty’” She shrugged, raising one eyebrow in a knowingly way at Rizos.

The woman with curly hair shook her head at her fiancé and just looked disappointed by that question. She ignored the teasing and challenging behind Saray’s words and decided to answer to the real question at hand.

“Saray, I wouldn’t give her the address if I didn’t trust her enough” She honestly said.

Saray kept herself from growling at that. She loved her fiancé, but she knew that the woman trusted just about everybody. Rizos trusting this blonde, didn’t really made the case that she thought it did.

The older brunette brunette looked at the younger one and they both just stared for a moment. Saray let out tired breath and nodded once. She believed Rizos, she believed that her fiancé thought that her ex-colleague was a good person. But that didn’t entirely matter either, it wasn’t what it was truly about.

“Mi amor, I know that you didn’t mean anything bad with this, but it was irresponsible to say the least.” She shook her head, with her eyebrows furrowed. “Why did you give her the address at all? What was the point of that?” She sincerely questioned.

“Honestly?” Rizos asked, though it wasn’t a question for Saray as much as it was a question to herself. Saray nodded and so the younger woman continued. “Zulema lives like a freaking ghost in that weird-vibes penthouse and I just don’t like it, ok.” She explained and Saray’s frown slowly dissipated into an understanding expression.

“I thought that maybe, just maybe, Maca could get her to spark up a little.. I mean, Maca’s awfully boring at first sight, and she can be quite the ice queen, but all the people that really knew her and that went out with her in college; _the privileged fuckers, as Tere and I used to call them_ ” She snickered at that last part, remembering how even her straightest friend had a little thing for the blonde woman.

Saray offered a half-hearted smile and she realized that she needed to focus on the thought at hand, so that she could maybe explain her actions to her fiancé in a way that could be understandable. “..They just seemed to suddenly sparkle and look brighter as soon as Maca started going out with them. She really can have that effect on others, so, _I don’t know how to explain this to you when you don’t really know her,_ but I- ” She exhaled tiredly “I just thought that she could do the same for Zulema, _maybe_ … it doesn’t hurt to try it, does it?” She conveyed in her serious voice, now it was her who had a frown on her face.

Saray listened and thought about it in silence.

A few weeks ago and she would’ve been all for this idea, she would agree and even help in setting the blonde to find Zulema and slip into her life. But a lot changed, she spent a lot of time thinking, analyzing. Over the last couple of weeks there were far too many mid-night calls where she had to stay up with Zulema to keep the woman from completely breaking down, crying and desperate while on speaker with her. Things had shifted again, she was walking on a thin line again and, though she was still ok, it wouldn’t take much to shatter the thin safety wall that she still had.

A perky blonde with little knowledge about life and a lot of abrasive attitude could be the sharp edge to just pierce a skin that wasn’t even all the way healed from the last time it ripped open.

“I know, you want her to go off into the world and let herself feel things and meet people, I did too. But I have been thinking about this a lot, I realized things now that I hadn’t before.” Saray slightly shook her head in sorrow “She’s too scared, she told me this over and over and I refused to listen; She likes living the way that she does, it’s good for her, it’s safe.. and though it took me a while to get it, I finally heard her the last time. I get it know. Being secluded is her way of being ok with things. And we have to accept and respect that. We need to not interfere.” Saray explained, thinking of what Zulema told her after the strange date that she had with the blonde woman which left her exhausted and wanting to cry about it at the director’s office at WS magazine.

_“Hiding is good for me Saray, you know how I was before… if I’m hiding, if I’m safely secluded from meeting new people... Then at least it won't hurt me when I realize that I can't love them” Zulema breathed out._

She thought a lot about that, and the more she did, the more she comprehended and agreed with it. She wanted to fight for Zulema’s right for a new beginning, but she knew it in her heart that it was just wishful thinking on her part; it was just selfishness of her.

All it took was one step in the outside world after years of living secluded in that apartment and Zulema was already showing the signs of it, she was already starting to crumble again.

Saray understood it then, and so she stopped trying to change Zulema or convince her that she wasn’t living her life in the right way. Her friend was doing the best that she could with what she was given, and Saray saw it clearly now.

Before the article, before the magazine and the photoshoot, Zulema was good, she was so well that the late night calls had completed ceased for months, the tiredness in her voice had been less audible than it’s been for the last weeks, and the horrible thoughts that went on in her head hadn’t been as loud as they are now, as they been five nights ago when she called at two in the morning and just cried for what felt like hours, until she could finally speak.

 _“I think I’m breaking down again, Saray. I don’t want to breakdown again.. Joder, I can’t afford to” She’d said in between sobs and it sank into Saray’s heart like a knife._ Saray had gone over that night, she couldn’t not go. She slipped out in the middle of the night and went to Zulema. The younger brunette sat with the troubled artist in the floor of the messy art-room and allowed her friend to quietly lay in her lap like a scared child would; with her head against Saray’s legs and her body curled up in cold floor that was covered by plastic. Saray had caressed her dark strands of hair until she fell asleep. She didn’t wake the woman to take her to the bedroom, she just stayed there alternating between looking at the heart-wrecking art and the heartbreaking artist.

Rizos didn’t know any of that, she’d been sleeping and by the time that she woke up and saw Saray’s text letting her know that she’d left early for work, she didn’t give it a second thought and just went about her day, unaware and unattached to the crises happening in Zulema’s home, miles away from her watch.

“No, she’s not keeping herself save, she’s keeping herself from living, and I simply disagree with it. I don’t care what she, _or you_ , say about it. She needs to live a little before she dies.” Rizos frowned and looked at Saray like the brunette was even stupid for saying what she’d just said, for believing Zulema’s bullshit about having to stay away from everyone and everything.

“Mi amor, it’s beautiful that you care. I knew that you did. But you can do that, there’s too much that you don’t know.. Zulema lives the way that she lives for a reason, and for as good as your intensions are, it doesn’t mean that they’ll _do_ any good…” She explained. She loved her fiancé for all of her brightness and glass half-full attitude, but there were some things that she should know not to mess with; somethings were beyond her control and it was important that she learned that, especially when it came to Zulema.

“Sometimes you look at a fragile person, and you’ll want to make them stronger, build them up, and I get it, I do. But in Zulema’s case.. you just have to keep her away from anything sharp or heavy. She’s past the phase of getting stronger, even with all the help and support and love in the world, she’s too far out of reach... We just have to keep her still, secure, inside the bubble that keeps her from all of the sharp objects. That’s all” Saray said, with passion and sorrow in her voice. It pained, it broke her fucking heart to have that knowledge, and it shattered her even more to say it out loud. But the truth sometimes was ugly _and brutal_ , and she of all people knew that.

Rizos was quiet, she stared at her plate of pancakes and fruits and suddenly it didn’t appear so enticing anymore. She breathed in and exhaled couple of times, like she was about to say something but gave up half-way. She didn’t like what she heard, she didn’t believe that there were people who couldn’t change or get stronger or happier. To her, everything had a reason and everyone could be better and brighter, she thought that they just had to allow themselves and not interfere with the things that life put in their paths. That’s what she was doing, that’s what she believed in.

In Rizos beliefs, Maca had found a way into her life after so many years for a reason, she’d met Zulema for a reason, and their connection was as clear as day light, _for a reason_. It had to mean something, _it had to_. Maybe for every ounce of fragility that Zulema had, Maca had a pound of strength, for every drop of doubt that the brunette showed, Maca would have an ocean of certainty. Maybe there was a new chance. She didn’t want to stop that, she just didn’t think that Zulema was ‘past that phase’. She didn’t believe that there was such a thing. _to her_ , everything had repair, no matter how broken it was. _She just didn’t know enough._

“You don’t know that for sure, Saray. You _can’t_ know that, you’re amazing and you have a thousand different qualities and gifts, I love you for every single one of them. but you’re not a fortune teller, you can’t predict people’s future” she raised her glare from the table and looked deep into her partner’s eyes.

“You can’t just believe in something for someone else and then never try to revise your beliefs and change them. Sometimes you’re just wrong, and I think you’re wrong this time.” She frowned and nodded “I think Macarena and Zulema have something to figure out with the other, and I don’t what it is, but I know that I don’t want to stay in the way of that, not just because I made an assumption, or analyses _, or whatever the fuck you want to call_ , about a person’s personality and state of mind years ago and decided to never change my perspective… you don’t give Zulema enough credit, she’s a grown woman, not a fragile infant. From what I know about her, she can take care of herself, and she can bend without breaking” she finished while the older brunette just watched her.

They were silent for few second, breathing out the frustration that they both felt towards the other’s perspective on the subject. 

Saray took a deep breath in and out.

 _“No, I’m scared that I won’t..I’m scared that If I get out there I’ll lose the small bit of control that I fought so hard to get back, I’m scared that after I break, you’ll stop your whole life again to help me pick up the shattered pieces..”_ She thought again of her friend’s words from when she’d been the one stating the case that Rizos was defending now, when she was still thinking that she knew what was best for Zulema and ignoring what the woman had been saying all along.

She bit into her lower lip and considered her next words for a moment, but she knew that for as much as they preferred to keep it a private matter, Rizos was a part of both their lives and she was entitled to know some things. She couldn’t expect that the woman would understand things when she was kept in the dark about most of it.

She ran her hand down her face and deeply exhaled, looking up at her fiancé again.

“Did you know that Zulema tried to kill herself?” Saray threw it out there with a heavy voice and a closed-up throat.

Rizos instantly sat up straighter and her eyes widened just slightly, just for a fraction of a second; her heart skipped a beat, but she was motionless. No, of course she didn’t know. Nobody did, none other than Zulema herself, Saray and the workers of the UniversitätsSpital Zürich hospital. 

Saray swallowed the lump in her throat and pushed back the tears in her eyes. She looked away and took a deep breath in, then let it out, before continuing. “Yeah.. She did, and she wasn’t playing with it either, almost killed the both of us.” Saray talked and the air around them got so tainted that it suddenly felt like they couldn’t even properly breathe.

“How?” Rizos asked before she could rethink it. She always hated how people were so fascinated by the _how’s_ and _when’s_ and _why_ ’s of any delicate situation, but she just couldn’t stop herself in that moment.

“The only reason that she didn’t succeed was because she knew that if she did, she would take me with her, and she couldn’t take the guilt of that. But it was real, it was too real” the taller brunette answered with a heavy chest.

Rizos had wide eyes and attentive ears. “But, how?” she couldn’t help the morbid curiosity. 

“I’m not giving you gruesome details, guapa de mi vida. That’s not the point of this..” Saray answered. She took a deep breath to will away the constricting in her heart and offered a reconfirming smile while pushing back her tears. For as much as this was a sensitive topic and brought up a lot of painful memories for her, she was far more worried about her fiancé’s feelings than her own. She was far more concerned to make this easy for the other woman than she was about keeping herself away from the bad flashbacks that threatened to evade her mind again.

The brown-skinned woman nodded in understanding and respect of her fiancé’s choice to not get into those details but kept herself attentive to everything that was being said and every emotion that ran back and forth between them.

The gitana looked away again when she realized that the tears weren’t drying. She absolutely hated to cry in front of Rizos, because she knew how much Rizos hated to see her cry.

“The point is; there’s a lot that you don’t know, there’s a lot that none of us will tell you, and you need to be ok with that and you need to quit thinking that you know best.. When I tell you that you can’t make Zulema stronger, when I say that she’s better off in her own bubble, in her seclusion of things, in the safety of her comfort-zone, it’s because I know it.. it’s because I finally decided to hear her and take into consideration all that we’ve been through over the many years that we’ve known each other... but trust me, knowing that, being aware of all of it.. it’s heartbreaking and I wish that I could change it too, but..” Saray shrugged in a defeated way.

Rizos could do nothing but nod in agreement by then. She still had a lot to say and think on the matter, but by that point, she was just far too shocked, _too sad_ , to do anything that required analytical thinking.

“So, no, I absolutely disagree with your decision.. you shouldn’t put Ferreiro in Zulema’s life like that, without thinking about, without talking to her, _or me_ , about it” Saray shook her head and got up from her chair, waking back to the kitchen and shaking off the heavy feelings that had evaded her bones. She exhaled the bad emotions out and went towards the fridge, to get a much-deserved beer. 

When she felt that she could finally breathe again, when the nasty feelings dissipated from the particles of air, she offered a tired smile and tried to completely let go from the ugliness of it all. “Now I know that you think that this Ms. Ferreiro is a fairy or something of the sorts, but she won’t change things, my love. Doesn’t matter how much of magical creature you think that she is.” She smiled, but for as beautiful as her smile was, it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

Rizos nodded, getting up from the table and moving to where her partner was. When she stood in front of Saray she leaned in and wrapped her arms around her, allowing the taller brunette to hold her and to make her feel less grim about all of what she’d heard.

“Vale, don’t be sad” Saray whispered into Rizos hair as she kissed the top of her head and held her tight. She didn’t want to be sad either, but she knew that with those difficult notions it was hard not to. “She has us, and she’s.. she’s ok.. _she’ll be ok_.” She nodded, trying to reassure both of them. “She’s stronger than she was a few years ago and she’s back to creating and she even accepted to do that piece for WS. She found a way to survive within her pain and she’s not constantly crumbling anymore.” She said, though it wasn’t a complete truth, but Rizos didn’t need to know that _. She wouldn’t be able to do anything about it if she did, so to have that knowledge wasn’t pertinent to her_. “We just need to not mess with the fragility of that.” She expressed, while keeping her fiancé’s body melting into her embrace and her glare distant and thoughtful, looking out into the vast emptiness and peace of her home.

Rizos nodded again, she kept her face buried in Saray’s chest and let the woman’s scent make everything feel ok again. Her chest constricted with fear of all that she didn’t know, and guilt for her reckless decision. “They are meeting today, downtown” She whispered and closed her eyes.

“How do you know?” Saray quietly asked. She closed her eyes and immediately stared to think on what to do then.

“Maca told me. We’ve been texting back and forth for a few days now. She said that she and Zulema have been talking and it’s going better than she expected. They should be meeting in a bakery, a couple of minutes from now” Rizos explained.

Saray nodded. She didn’t quite know what to say, what to think, what to feel. “Vale” She just continued to hold her fiancé. She would deal with this later, not now, she didn’t know what she could do now. She didn’t know what she could do at all. All that she knew was the crippling fear that rose in the dept of her bones and chilled its way all around her body, like a bad warning would.

 _Macarena Ferreiro_. She didn’t know much, other than the common talk, about the woman. But she would soon. She would figure out what the hell she was supposed to do, once her thoughts stopped racing and she could clearly think again.

“You really believe that Maca can’t do anything for Zulema? You really think that she’s that fragile, that breakable?” Rizos questioned in a whispered tone. She finally felt like the puzzle that was Zulema Zahir was starting to get clearer. She was finally starting to understand that the excessive protectiveness of Saray wasn’t really excessive as it was smart and careful. She understood then that whatever it was, whatever catastrophe had happened in the artist’s life, it ran much deeper than a mild thing that got blown out of proportion _, as she had always secretly thought that it was._

“I’m- joder, I don’t know, mi amor.” Saray shook her head. She couldn’t even wrap her head around the fact that Zulema had told her nothing, that over the countless calls and visits, something as big as this didn’t come out.

If it was anyone else this wouldn’t be a big deal at all, but to someone who made it that much of an effort to stay away from everything and everyone and hadn’t come out of their hiding-hole for years on end, this was as immense as anything had ever been. _How could her friend not tell her? How could she not know?_

“I don’t know, but I will find out” She settled, holding Rizos close and nodding her head in a reaffirming way.

* * *

At the bakery shop, Maca stood outside by the door, having her second cigarette and freezing herself out while she waited for the brunette. For the first time in her life, she was early for a meeting, not on time as she always was, not prepared as she’d always been. She finished her cigarette, and she was just about to go inside when she saw a taxi pulling over at the other side of the frozen street.

Maca couldn’t see inside of the car because of the cold and the fog that left her mouth and got in the way of her sight with every breath that she let out, but she knew it was her, _she could feel it somehow._ After a couple of seconds watching, waiting, the door of the car opened, and she saw the beautiful brunette stepping out.

She wanted to smile because her heart just felt warmer when she saw the woman, but she didn’t, she just stared, terrified, with her breath caught in her throat and her heart suddenly racing inside of her chest.

 _It was her,_ It looked clear then, for some reason, Macarena just felt it right then, she just knew. Zulema was the one that she came here to find, to this freezing place, where she knew no one and cared for nothing; that strange woman was the reason.

She watched as the brunette looked at the floor while she crossed the street and made her way to the other side; it seemed like she hadn’t yet recognized Maca yet.

When the artist got to the same sidewalk as her and raised her face to look around, Maca’s breath caught in her throat. She wanted to wave or call for Zulema, but she could do nothing but look at her, at the pure kind of beauty that she was. She had no make-up, hair tucked behind her ears, a heavy grey coat, dark pants and winter boots; with the white of the icy street as a background, the woman was nothing if not a lost angel, walking around a city and trying to find her way, trying to find something that she wasn’t quite sure on what it was. _Something that would be worth finding._

She was lost, just like the photographer was too.

She stood there while Zulema looked around, and just as she was about to try and call out for her, the woman’s face turned in her direction and their eyes suddenly met.

Zulema stood still, looking at the blonde who seemed to have been watching her for a while and trying to figure out what the hell they were doing, what the hell she was doing.

Nothing else existed but them, the cold and the snow. They saw each other as if their eyes were solely made for seeing one another.

Zulema was waiting for permission, for leading, something that would break the spell of that moment. Macarena was just enjoying the new feeling that she didn’t even know existed until a couple of minutes ago. She didn’t want to understand or figure out anything in that moment, she just wanted that feeling to last. She needed no explanation, for the first time in her life, she felt something towards someone else that wasn’t complete indifference, and she didn’t want to ruin with unnecessary definitions or labeling.

The blonde woman smiled, Zulema just looked at her for a while longer; then she smiled too.

They stood there looking and smiling and feeling, in the middle of a frozen sidewalk, as if the whole world had stopped just for them.

They didn’t know it yet, but, in that cold deserted streets, halfway through February, they might have just found what they’ve been unknowingly looking for, something that would either fix them or destroy them….


End file.
